Public Seetor Industry and Quest for Self-Reliance in India

This paper raises the question whether the Indian economy can attain a much higher rate of grouth in the long run without running into severe problems of technological dependence, if not balance of payments crises, and discusses the role of public sector industry in this context. The public sector in Indian industry has gro vn as much through the default of the private sector as by the design of gpvernment policy-makers. However, its development has not been adequate for (a)attaining a reasonnably high rate of growth of manufacturing industry, (b) ensuring a high rate of expansion of manufacturing employment and thereby initiating a change in the occupational structure, (c)reducing the degree of inequality in the development of large-scale industry as between the few advanced enclaves and the -vast territory which continues to be empty of my large-scale plants, (d) acting as a force for reducing income disparities among the people, and (e) rendering India technologically more self-reliant.