1 Anna WWII Cash Coupon

Dhar was a princely state in central India under the Paramountcy of the British Crown, and its state bank issued these small-denomination cash coupons during the war years to address the acute coin shortage that afflicted much of the subcontinent after 1940. The colonial administration's wartime metal demands stripped copper and nickel from circulation almost entirely, forcing dozens of princely states to improvise with paper substitutes at fractional values.

The S-prefix in the Pick reference places this firmly in the specialized category of local and regional issues — not recognized as legal tender beyond Dhar's own territory. Few of these coupons survived; they were functional scrip, handled hard and discarded once the coin shortage eased.