54 SOCIAL SCIENTIST profit in private hands and restricted the scope of public investment largely to social overheads and economic infrastructures. Public domain has recently been extended to sick mills in the private sector ! There is a high degree of concentration of ownership of property in land and capital. Both earned and propertied incomes are highly skewed in their distribution. The pattern of income distribution leaves sizable savings in private hands all of which do not seek profitable avenues of investment. A good part of savings in the household sector is embodied in residential houses and other consumer durables. Such construction especially in the U-sector, represents luxury consumption. High income groups are in a position to exert a powerful influence over the market to command scarce resources to produce a variety of luxury goods which are far beyond the reach of ordinary consumers. The rapidly growing black money, which is unable to find adequate avenues of investment in speculation, real estate, gold, jewellery and so on, aggressively pursues luxury goods domestically produced or imported. In this respect, partial controls over essential commodities and relaxed regulation and control over investments below certain limits have accelerated the flow of invesfible resources into the luxury goods sector which yields fantastic rates of return on investment. In fact, a substantial part of private investment is in the luxury goods sector. Many of the monopolies, oligopolies, especially of foreign origin, are busy making fabulous profits by producing airconditioners, frigidaires, electronic and electrical goods, soft drinks, processed foods, cosmetics and tdilets, synthetic fibres, ready-made garments, shoes, tobacco and so on. Such diversion of scarce resources is not confined to the domestic sector alone. A modest official estimate has placed the foreign exchange leakage at Rs 240 crores per annum. Unofficial figures indicate a multiple of this amount. This is in addition to the bill of legally imported luxury goods. The shifting of the headquarters of the international Mafia is expected to widen this gaping hole in foreign exchange. Thus, the increasing inequality in income distribution accompanied by half-hearted measures of regulation and control are increasingly narrowing down the relative volume of productive investment in the economy. As for the organized private sector, there has been a phenomenal growth of assets owned and controlled by the large industrial houses. The assets controlled by the Birlas have multiplied by nearly 20 times over the last 20 years. The corresponding growth for the Tatas is about 10 times. It is amazing how large industrial houses have grown at such a staggering rate despite all professions about reducing concentration of economic power. It is also shocking to know that all this growth is not attributable to internally generated resources. Using their all-pervading power and influence, the large houses are able to command and control larger and larger resources from the government and the public as compared to their own. For instance, Tatas own hardly 5 per cent of the equity of TISGO