Starting Points for Policy Leap

GOVERNMENT has been too busy with the political and legal aspects of bank nationalisation to start laying down the policy framework and guidelines for a new credit policy that would be closely integrated with the Fourth Plan. Since the major part of bank credit goes to large industry and this position would not be significantly altered in the near future the new credit policy has to be closely integrated more specifically with the approach underlying the Monopolies Bill and the ideas, still very nebulous, about reform of the industrial licensing system and management of public enterprises. Larger provisions have to be made, of course, for agriculture, small business and special programmes for backward areas (assuming that some such programmes would be drawn up expeditiously) but let there be no illusions about the relative importance of these new activities: in quantitative terms, their immediate as distinct from their long-term impact upon the pattern of distribution of bank credit cannot be earth-shaking. What then should be the starting points for a policy leap?