The papers printed in this volume were presented at the Seminar on Indian Industrialization organized by the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, on 20, 21 and 22 December 1977. The volume also includes summary reports of the comments made by the participants at the end of each session.
The editorial introduction which follows gives some idea about the contents of the papers and about the general trend of thinking that emerged. The editors, Dr. A. K. Bagchi and Shrimati Nirmala Banerjee, were also in charge of organizing and conducting the Seminar. It meant a tremendous amount of work for them-contacting the participants, collecting the papers, getting them ready for distribution, arranging accommodation and other conveniences for the outstation participants, conducting the daily sessions and finally getting the papers ready for publication. They were unstintingly helped in all this by the other faculty members and by the administrative staff.
The Seminar received liberal financial support from the Indian Council of Social Science Research. The Council also gave active assistance in other ways. Dr. D. D. Narula, Director of the ICSSR, attended all the sessions and participated in the discussions. Enthusiastic response was received from universities, research institutions, the Reserve Bank of India, the Industrial Development Bank of India and from the financial journals. A list of the participants and the institutions they represented is given separately. The Centre offers its grateful thanks to all of them.
Dr. K.S. Krishnaswamy, Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, agreed very kindly to inaugurate the Seminar. His in-augural address, which is printed here, set the tone for the detailed discussion over the three-day period. Two West Bengal ministers, Professor Sambhu Ghosh, Minister for Higher Education, and Shri Chittabrata Majumdar, Minister for Cottage and Small Industries, gave illuminating talks, while Dr. Ashok Mitra, Minister for Finance, attended many of the sessions.
The different sessions were chaired by Professor Ajit Biswas, Professor Mihir Rakshit, Professor Santosh Bhattacharya, Professor Deb Kumar Bose and myself.
We are immensely grateful to all those who contributed to the success of the Seminar. The attendance was very encouraging all through the sessions and participants' response was sharp and lively. It is our hope that the selection of papers (all of which have since been revised by the authors) will prove useful to the wider public to whom the volume is now presented.
For three days in December 1977 a number of scholars from all over India gathered at the CSSSC to discuss some issues regarding India's industrial economy. We had made strenuous efforts to bring together a cross-section of leading scholars known to be working on problems of Indian industry. Some of them could not come be-cause of other engagements. But a substantial number among the scholars contacted did ultimately attend the seminar. Fifteen of them, mostly economists, had come prepared with papers. Every paper had been read beforehand by at least some members of the audience and hence in every session there were some who could give the lead to the discussion with their well-informed comments. The participants as well as the listeners came from a wide range of backgrounds: from academic institutions, government departments, the Reserve Bank, and also from amongst journalists and industrialists. It is a fair measure of the success of the seminar and of the general interest in the theme that most of the hundred odd people who had been invited sat through all the five long sessions of the seminar.
One of our chief concerns in arranging the seminar was to find out issues of current interest and the state of debate on them in this field. Therefore, rather than limit the scope of the seminar, we hadtried to get the participation of as wide a group as possible. Most of the papers at the seminar nevertheless clustered round a couple of common themes. Even the industry-wise studies were directed towards illustrating the general preoccupations rather than considering the problems and progress of a particular industry.
This unpremeditated consensus reflects the extent of the general concern with the specific issues at hand. One of these issues centred around the causes of the persistent failure of the industrial sector to reach its desired pattern and rate of growth while the other was concerned with the alternatives open to the industrial sector and the policy makers for changing this state of affairs. Several of the papers, especially those in the second session, did not specifically deal with these themes; but they served the very useful purpose of clarifying the definitions of several of the concepts such as capacity utilization or scales in Indian industries which are often used loosely in this debate and therefore add further to the confusion.
In the first session on the "Trends in Industrialization' each of the three participants was concerned with the stagnation that has haunt-ed the industrial sector for over ten years. Both Patnaik and Nayyar carefully establish with supporting data the fact of this stagnation.
Patnaik then goes on to explain it in terms of aningenious model of the economy of India which is supposed to consist of two sectors-the public and the private. The structure of this economy is such that the private sector is being protected by the public sector from all risks, including risks of losses through imbalance between supply and demand. At any time if there is a chance of a glut in the market, the public sector buys off the stocks for the private sector at prices which comfortably cover the costs of the latter, If now, however, the public sector attempts to expand its investment effort on the strength of the wage goods or foreign exchange in its stock, the private sector can negate these efforts by cornering the stocks with the use of the liquid resources it has acquired through sales to the public sector. This speculative cornering of such stocks leads to a rise in prices of necessities.
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