28 SOCIAL SCIENTIST restraints on the consumption of the masses of the population while, at the same time, enabling the richer stratum of society a high level of conspicuous consumption in the form of incentive goods. The fiscal and price system is operated with a view to curb mass consumption through commodity taxation and deficit-induced inflationary financing, while at the same time, transferring resources to private investors through suitably designed systems of incentives and inducements. The basic constraint in this pattern of resource mobilisation is the physical limits of subsistence and tolerance levels which are determined by the resultant forces that operate through the liberal democratic institutions and procedures. Excessive pressure exerted on mass consumption tends to disturb industrial peace, thereby, weakening the stability of the very system which is meant to generate private profit. This constraint can be removed only when the contradiction between social production and private appropriation is satisfactorily resolved. The loopholes in the tax laws, the incentive schemes that are incorporated in them from time to time and the indifference with which they are enforced, result in considerable leakages and erosion of the revenue potential. Besides, the phenomenal increase in the unproductive public expenditures has cut into the net resources available for developmental outlays. Moreover, though the economy abounds with surplus labour—both skilled and unskilled—the incentive systems associated with the market-oriented Indian economy is not conducive to their conversion into forms of capital. This enormous potential of hidden capital can be materialised only when individual ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange gives place to collective ownership and socialist consciousness. 1 See Bombay Plan, New Book Company, 1944, Bombay; Penguin Edition, New York, 1945. 2 R.K. Hazari, Big Business in India : A Study of Owneiship and Control, New Delhi, 1961. 3 Government of India, Report of the Monopolies Inquiry Commission, 1965, pp. 438. 4 Government of India, Explanatory Memorandum on the Budget of the Central Government for 1972-73, New Delhi, 1972, p. 9. s Government of India, Committee on Distribution of Income and Levels of Living, New Delhi, 1969. 8 Government of India, Ministry of Finance, Direct Taxes Inquiry Committee, Final Report, New Delhi, December 1971. 7 7W., para 2.52, pp, 19-20. 8 Government ofKerala, Repoit of the Taxation Inquiry Committee, 1969. * W. Arthur Lewis, Theory of Economic Growth, London, 1956. 18 See Explanatory Memorandum on Budget, op. cit. 11 Government of India, Indian Tax Reform-Report of Survey by Nichols Kaldor, Reprint, 1969. 12 Direct Taxes Inquiry Committee, op. cit., p. 8. 13 See Lewis, op. cit.