NEW ECONOMIC POLICY 13 generating a surplus from its current account which would generate planned economic growth with the public sector at the apex. Whatever little planned economic growth we had so far, then, must go if the political system is to be maintained. The idea we are trying to convey is not so much that our political system is in philosophical opposition to a system of planned economic development, so that by choice it is now moving away from the latter, but that its own mechanism leads it into a stage when it becomes incapable of planned economic growth under State supervision. However, the growth of the national product is nevertheless necessary. As the claims of the rich in the industrial and the agricultural sector and the better off employees of the tertiary sector mount, unless the size of the national product is also increasing at that rate, it would result in a continuous inroad into the level of living of the millions outside the coalition. This has to be arrested, or else the political system faces a bigger threat— not from within the coalition—hut from outside it, The government and the men in power must, therefore, continue to seek a certain rate of growth of the national product, and if the government is to play any role in this process such role must entirely come through borrowing including borrowing from the Central Bank as its major component. A process of growth initiated by public investment through larger-scale borrowing and deficit financing has very severe limitations in a society where the modal living conditions are at the subsistence level. Prabhat Patniak lias recent Iv analysed these Invitations,'' and we need not repeat those arguments hen1. It may be just noted in passing that a deficit of the government must ex-post equal the surplus of the private sector (i.e. in a closed economy). Thus, a larger public deficit will force a large private surplus, and under conditions of infr.istruciural bottlenecks to expansion of output and oligopolistic restrictions to entry into production, this is mostly achieved through a change in income distribution rather than of output. Income redistribution takes (lie form of inflation which tun her restricts the speed of output adjustment through speculative activities. Thus, a trc^nd path wliere government deficit is growing would result in a trend of deteriorating income distribution. Coming back to our discussion, we should recall that (lie purpose for which public investment was examined was to see if it can arrest, the tendency of the income distribution to worsen. A system of deficit based public expansion program, if it is prolonged over the. medium to long run, resulting in a further worsening of the distribution of income will achieve precisely what it was proposed to stop. Thus, the government and the men in power, while they must continue to seek a < enain rate of growth of the national product, have* no options other than wishing that it comes through private-initiative. This is the only reason that would explain that the same social class of advisers to the government who owed their seat in the government as Well as their opulence to the growth oftlie planned economy, 'the pul)lic sector and (lie socialistic pattern, now must speak'against it and in favour of a new era relying on private initiative. It is to save tlieir own social existence, to save tlie coalition from splitting up