by improving agricultural production, remov-substantial imports. This will enable us to
FROM 50 YEARS AGO
ing transport bottlenecks and large scale power build up strategic stocks and on present show
production. Now these are the very things on ing, these stocks should be able to counter the
which a more ambitious programme of deve-consequences of fluctuations in food supply.
lopment can be firmly based. This is precisely Freer sales from stocks, whenever the situ
what the Second Plan proposes to do. Where, ation warrants it, it is hoped, will keep food Vol VIII, No 41, October 13, 1956 then, is the catch? Why should the Second Plan prices in check. The target for foodgrains
have to start under less favourable auspices?production in the Second Plan has also beenOn the Carpet There are critics, of course, who complain stepped up in order to eliminate all possible
that the progress achieved during the first five risks of a food shortage. It has been possible
(Editorial)
years was not really as solid as it appears to to remedy what might have turned out to be
The Second Plan did not start under the same be, because in an agriculture based economy, vital deficiency through imports of surplus happy auspices as the First Plan. This might agriculture is the foundation of all develop-wheat and grain from US which will not cause sound paradoxical when everyone agrees that ment and it is not possible to say definitely a drain on our foreign exchange resources. In the First Plan has been a great success and all how much of the improvement in agriculture the case of cloth also, the economy has shown foreign observers, experts as well as lay, have was the result of permanent improvement and some signs of strain, but the situation is someexpressed their admiration for the progress how much of it was fortuitous, being the gift what different in that there has been no decline that India achieved. The World Bank Mission of favourable monsoons. That the crops this in cloth production. On the contrary, producwhich visited India some time ago said that and year have not been so good or that even last tion has substantially increased, and some-Mr Eugene Black, the President of the World year they were not as good as in the previous thing is being done to step up production even Bank, has been fulsome in his praise “for solid year lends point to what they say. A sizeable further, by a rebate of excise duty on mill achievements in the economic field which have decline in foodgrains production is a fact production which has been just announced on been recorded in India during the past five that cannot be denied; it has created some the additional production above that in the years”. The First Plan achieved what it set out difficulties which happily have now been base period, by introducing power looms and to do viz lay the base for further development met through arrangements concluded for by organising handloom production.
Economic and Political Weekly October 14, 2006
