Corporate Sector-Baby Boom

fostering contempt among businessmen for the government's licensing regulations. This again is being done in the interests of full utilisation of capacity and maximisation of production. But production, of what? One may be certain that it will not be the production of essential items currently in acute short supply like cement, paper, fertilisers, caustic soda or soda ash which will go up as a result, but that of a whole range of non-essential, high-profit products like biscuits and chocolates, baby foods, toothpaste and others of that genre. What is more, overall production of even, those items may not go up and all that may happen is that some favoured industrial unit whose illegal capacity is regularised will be enabled to increase its market share at the expense of other units in the industry. Much the same objections apply to the decision to allow the privilege of 25 per cent automatic expansion of capacity over a five-year period to all industries in the First Schedule of the Industries (Development and Regulation) Act, This schedule includes, among other industries, man- made fibres and synthetic detergents. It also includes drugs and pharmaceuticals which label, as is well known, covers a very large number of products whose money-spinning properties are far more pronounced than any medicinal properties they may or may not have.