Fairy Tales about Industrial Growth

Fairy Tales about Industrial Growth (By a Special Correspondent) THE latest (August) issue of the Reserve Bank of India Bulletin contains a review of industrial growth in the 1970s, based on the CSO's index or industrial production (base : 1970-71 = 100). Unfortunately, in the four pages or so of text, it is difficult to find many sentences which go beyond verbalising data from the tables. And the few attempts at analysis are jejeune. It is claimed, for instance, that "the setback in the industrial sector during the past fifteen months could be attributed to a large extent to severe power shortage and underutilisation of installed capa- , coupled with widespread labour problems". Now, low production gets reflected in low utilisation of capacity, but cannot be caused by it. What needs to be explained is why capacity utilisation has been low.