Export Promotion Councils- Preoccupation with Lobbying

theme over and over again, but the extraordinary display put up by the Congress party on the occasion of its annual session at Calcutta does deserve to be reviewed in some tranquillity. Bidhan Nagar has finally helped to confirm the impression that the country is 'now, really and truly, on the way to being set up as a one-party State. Newspapers have carried numerous stories illustrating how the distinction between the government and the party was totally obliterated at the session. If anything, the stories perhaps understate the extent of the convergence. The financial outlay by the party for organising the session reveals only a minor segment of the whole truth. The bulk of the organisational arrangements were on government account and would be shown under some head of financial expenditure or other of the state or the central government. Even for that part of the expenditure claimed as having been borne by the party itself, the reality would be somewhat more circuitous, since funds have been raised through coaxing advertisements from captive public sector units or sales of tickets for exhibitions organised entirely on the basis of props and equipment freely supplied by the different ministries and state governments.