West Asia-Egyptian Initiative

of cement units and a cement freight equalisation pool, so that cement producers get what is coyly termed 'a fair return' even as cement users anywhere in the country are sought not to be penalised for their distance from producing centres. The difference made to this by 'public' distribution is that the first kind of intervention is altered by requiring that all the manufactured cement be channelled to, and then allocated by, the public authority. A similar attempt, but through industry itself, had been made in the late sixties when the government had blessed the formation and functioning of the Cement Allocation and Co-ordinating Organisation (CACO) comprising the manufacturers themselves and a distributive secretariat. CACO folded up in a few years, ostensibly because cement was no longer in such short supply. act CACO had come under a shadow as a result of exposure in Parliament over its inordinate contributions to the Congress party; the connection between such covert connections and the continuance of not-so-fair allocations to small consumers was lost on no one.