8 SOCIAL SCIENTIST creeping economic stagnation. The services sector, especially public administration and defence, shows the way out of the stagnation. A relatively low outlay here pushes up the rate of national income growth. While initially other considerations must have determined the expansion of defence and public administration, the fact that such expansion can accelerate the pace of economic growth, as conventionally measured, must have contributed to the decision-making process too. The government's anxiety to induct foreign technology and capital with the object of changing the climate of industrial investment has at the same time also led to a purposive decision to expand and modernise banking, insurance, telecommunication arrangements, facilities for tourism, etc. 13. Have we here entered a trap of circularity? Growth in agriculture and industry is sluggish; to get over this frustrating experience in the material-producing sectors, the authorities pay extra attention to the services sector, which is encouraged to expand at a furious pace. But in order that this acceleration might become sustainable, considerably enlarged outlays have to be earmarked for this sector. As a result, there is a squeeze on resources available for agriculture and industry, further inhibiting their rate of growth. The depressed rate of growth in the material-producing sectors however, once more goads the government to concentrate with even greater intensity than before on the services sector and to continue drawing resources away from elsewhere. This then becomes a self-processing mechanism: the crisis in material-production contributes to the shift in favour of services, and this shift aggravates the crisis in material-production. 14. Income grows in the services sector^ but there is no proportionate increase in the absorption of the working force* The burden of unemployment and under-employment in agriculture and industry intensifies. Should the rate of growth of material output fall short of the rate of growth of population—as it might happen in some years— other things remaining the same, the outcome could be widespread social distress. If the modality of official resource-raising further adds to this distress, the system may simply break down. NOTES AND REFERENCES 1. The new series on national accounts statistics released by the Central Statistical Organisation for the period 1980-81 to 1984-85 and the quick estimates for 1986-87 suggests that, in the most recent years, the proportion of national income originating in services has in fact crossed 40 per cent, while the share of agriculture and allied activities has shrunk to 33 per cent. 2. See Sudha Deshpande and L.K. Deshpande, 'Census of 1981 and the Structure of Employment, Economic and Political Weekly, June 1,1985,Table 1. 3. See Colin dark. The Conditions of Economic Progress, Chapter X, Table 1. 4. For a discussion, see V.M.Dandekar, 'Agriculture, Employment and Poverty', Economic and Political Weekly, September 20-27 1986, p.A-94.