14 SOCIAL SCIENTIST industries has been in metals, fuel, chemicals, machinery and equipment, fertilisers etc., which constitute intermediate goods required for the development of private industry and agriculture. These industries have involved large volumes of investment, highly specialised skills, long gestation periods and considerable risk and uncertainty. Hence, most of these are far beyond the resources and capabilities of private capital which is normally attracted to quick-maturing and highly profitable consumer goods industries. At the same time, private investment has not been prevented from investment in steel, chemicals, fertilisers, oil and other basic heavy capital goods industries which were meant to be reserved for the state sector according to the various industrial policy statements. It will thus be seen that it is the broad needs of the private property which has largely dictated a policy of expanding public sector which is basically designed to supplement and not supplant private sector. Is Planning Necessarily Socialist? Comprehensive national plans, no doubt, had their origin in socialist countries. But corporate planning has had a long history in capitalist countries. Bacause of its formal association with socialist economies, the USA is still shy of comprehensive planning in the governments. But it has made significant advances in respect of micro and departmental planning in recent years. The adoption of the outer, forms of comprehensive or multi-level planning should never be misunderstood as representing the substance or the values that guide socialist economies. Nor could one associate selective nationalisation of financial and economic infrastructure facilities as evidence of socialism. There are several instances of the sick industrial units in the private sector having been taken over by the public authorities. At times, undertakings on the verge of bankruptcy or liquidation are baled out through schemes of nationalisation carrying attractive compensation. But nationalisation has hardly touched the profitable areas of private industrial sector. Nor have the regulations and control prevented the growth of monopolies and concentration of economic power. Despite the presence of Monopolies Commission armed with Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Act, monopoly houses seem to grow merrily as ever. State trading in exports and imports began as an organisational arrangement to deal with trade with communist countries. The minerals and metals part of foreign trade has since been entrusted to Metals and Minerals Trading Corporation (MMTC). The Food Corporation of India is primarily concerned with procurement at a minimum support price and the building up of a sizeable buffer stock. All these trading organisations operate through a network of intermediaries who seem to thrive through assured margins and unscrupulous practices. Who Commands the 'Commanding Heights5? At best, public sector can indicate the extent of control over the