steps (mainly increase in personal tax rates on annual income above Rs 40,000) taken towards redistributive justice, though it has still to be proved that penal rates of taxation have reduced real inequality or avoided conspicuous consumption over the past 30 years. Even a programme of Rs 200 crores would create organisational and distributional problems. It would involve provision of about 2 mn tonnes of food- grains to the new income-receivers, a task to which our agricultural procurement policy is still not geared. The public distribution of foodgrains has declined from 14.1 mn tonnes in 1966 to 8.9 ran tonnes in 1970 (para 32), This dismantling of the organisation has occurred just when four good years of harvest create doubts about the luck holding out in 1971-72, The budget will show to what extent the Government is serious about the immediate problems of investment. However, in the long run, it is the Planning Commission which has to take an integrated view of development and work out a long-term development strategy. The recent changes in the status of the Planning Commission and the pronouncements of Planning Minister, C Subramaniam, hardly give evidence of this consciousness.
