NOTE 57 has also absorbed a good part of resource mobilization. In fact, the balance of revenues in the current plan seems to be almost nil. Against this background of constrained resource mobilization, the target of Rs 6850 crores of additional resource mobilization envisaged for the Fifth Plan appears almost unattainable. Deficit Financing When faced with opposition against excessive use of indirect taxation as a measure of redistributing income from the consuming to the saving classes, the government has increasingly resorted to deficit financing. From the point of view of the economy as a whole, when external transactions are in balance, excess of investment over saving (in real terms) may be a measure of the unbridged gap in real resources. But, when restricted to public sector, deficit is gauged by the difference between gross public expenditure on the one hand and gross receipts including public saving and the net draft on private savings made through public borrowing on the other. In this sense, that portion of the subscriptions by individuals and other institutional sectors to public borrowing converted into commercial bank loans will be deemed as government contribution to deficit financing. Part of the deficit may be covered by running down the cash balances. The rest is covered through expansion of currency and credit by way of loans from the Reserve Bank of India, commercial banks credit, issuance of ad hoc Treasury Bills and so on. In fact, bank credit unwarranted by the volume and turnover of goods or increasing monetiza-tion will have inflationary effects. The extent of price rise would depend on the velocity of circulation of money and turnover of goods. The concept of deficit has undergone changes from plan to plan. The volume of deficit has also increased progressively a,s a source of plan finance as seen from the following table. DEFICIT FINANCING BY GOVERNMENT Amount (Rs crores) First Five Year Plan (1951-56) 532.0 Second Five Year Plan (1956-61) 948.0 Third Five Year Plan (1961-66) 1133.0 Plan Holiday (1966-69) 733.0 Fourth Five Year Plan (1969- ) 3750.0 (tentative) Deficit financing is accompanied by soaring price level which has touched new heights at every successive wave of deficit financing in the last two decades. Based on 1949 prices, there was relative stability in the price level over the First Plan, partly because of the successive good harvests towards the end of the Plan. Prices increased by more than 25 per cent over the Second Plan. The increase was about 32 per cent over the Third Plan. It has further gone up by about 70 per cent since then. The