PUNJAB-Drift to Disaster-Lessons of the Nakodar Incident

development inputs. This phenomenon has tended in recent years, and particularly in the current financial year, to become more marked. It signifies that incomes and standards of living of the working people and the mass of the poor as well as the growth potential of the economy and the size of the Plan in real terms are eroding at a faster rate than suggested by the inflation rate measured in terms of the movement of the wholesale price index. This trend in prices with all its deleterious effect on economic growth and mass welfare can only be strengthened by the type of resource mobilisation effort that has been mounted by V P Singh in his second budget. Apart from some fiddling with indirect taxes, especially customs duty, reliance has been placed almost entirely on increases in administered prices, including prices of primary wage goods such as foodgrains. As against more than Rs 2,000 crore which arc estimated to be realised by the government from price hikes in the coming year, net additional revenue from customs duties is estimated to be Rs 407 crore, from excise duties only Rs 60 crore and from direct taxes a paltry Rs 21 crore.