The Victor Speaks

are resorted to at present by several reputable cotton mills and vanaspati manufacturers to stabilise the retail prices of their products for the benefit of consumers (and, no doubt, for their own goodwill) and, generally in present trading conditions, this is a desirable practice If the rationale of the Commission is that monopolistic practices arising from concentration of capital' have to be curbed, then it would be obviously illogical in the long run to keep public enterprises free from the Commissions scrutiny. Yet the jurisdiction of the proposed Commission does not extend to public sector enterprises or even to those private enterprises whose management has been taken over by Government, This could be an acceptable approach for those public enterprises which being entirely monopolistic are regulated by legislative committees, but why leave out those industries or trades which have both public and private units? This question is of increasing significance in steel, petroleum and sugar and will acquire significance in other industries, too. More immediately, the Das Gupta Commission's definition of a "dominant undertaking", as one having one-third or more of the production or total supply of a commodity would be rendered ambiguous unless there is a clarification regarding the inclusion of the public units' contribution to the total supply.