Planning against a Paper Famine

BUSINESS Planning against a Paper Famine THE Chairman of Indian Paper Mills Association, true to the tradition of his predecessors, has held Government responsible for the industry's lack of growth. Admittedly, the industry's profits in recent years have been lower than the average for all industries. True too that a shortage of paper is likely to come about. But the industry has been delicensed and prices have been decontrolled. Bajoria's statement has nothing significant to say on how industry proposes to use this freedom to solve its problems, barring his plea that foreign exchange allocations be made more liberal and long-term leases of forest area be granted to paper mills. Bajoria states that Government did not pay heed to industry's warning (in 1964) of an impending paper shortage in the Fourth Plan. What exactly did the association or the individual paper mills do to ward off the shortage? Excepting West Coast, which sought to tackle its raw materials problem by a programme of planned afforestation, no other unit can claim to have taken any such precautions.