POLITICS-Pushed into a Corner

boosting consumption by the middle classes and the rich. The average gross domestic saving rate for the three-year period 1988-89 to 1990-91 was 22.5 percent and it may have been around 22.8 per cent in the last three years from 1993-1994 to 1995-96. With the base-line estimate of 24 per cent for 1996-97 used for the Approach document's Ninth Plan exercises, the projection of a saving rate of 26.2 per cent for the Plan's terminal year, implying an incremental saving ratio of over 30 per cent, is on the optimistic side. There is nothing in the Planning Commission's thinking, as revealed in the Approach Paper, which would go to correct the present pro- consumption bias and raise the economy's savings base.