72 SOCIAL SCIENTIST inflationary pressures would further be aggravated, jeopardizing all future development programmes. Finally, we would like to concentrate on an aspect of the Indian economy as revealed by national income statistics and analyzed in the paper. Roy Chowdhury and Narain have shown that among public undertakings, the primary sector has ^the barest share of 7 per cent which has been falling steadily to reach the level of less than 4.55 per cent at constant prices in'1972-73." Tertiary sector has the largest share within the public sector having more than two-thirds of the total. Secondary sector has shown an upward trend increasing from 12 per cent in 1960-61 to the level of around 17 per cent in 1972-73. The private sector shows a quite different pattern. Privately-owned primary sector has a share of about 60 per cent of the total net product of the sector with a marginal fall at constant prices and no change at current prices. The net product of the rest of the enterprises in the private sector is almost equal between the secondary and teritary sectors. This pattern continues upto 1972-73. Analysis of the structural changes for the public and private sectors as discussed above reveals a very significant institutional feature of the Indian economy: that the privately owned sector is controlling a fairly large segment of the economy which contributes around 50 per cent to the net domestic product. While the tertiary and secondary sectors have been growing under the umbrella of the public sector, private enterprises have tightened their stranglehold in the primary sector ^where the overall level of domestic product in the country in any given year is still principally determined by the levels uf agricultural production, as it was in 1950-51, and agricultural production, on its part, still depends on weather conditions." The market for agricultural commodities is likely to be under the full control of the private interests resulting in greater degree of movement of the prices of primary products. This becomes more evident from the price rise in the primary sector in comparison with that in the secondary and tertiary sectors.2 This is not so comforting a thought for a planned economy aiming at a socialistic pattern of society in which the public sector is assigned a dominant role. It points to top priority for a radical transformation of the present economic set-up; the public sector should extend its control over the agricultural sector and the government should take necessary steps with regard to nationalization of wholesale trade in agricultural produce. D CHAKRABORTY 1 Uma Dutta Roychowdhury and Pratap Narain, "Current National Income Statistics What They Tell" Economic and Political Weekly, Vol X No 39, 27 September 1975, pp 1540-1553. a Table 3, op cit.