REGIONAL IMBALANCES 23 clear, therefore, that the industrial development in the Punjab was quite unimpressive. This, however, is attributable to its deficiency in mineral resources, (particularly in coal) and partly to the unfavourable railway rates and fiscal policies which were designed to encourage the export of food and raw materials from the region. Even the change in the fiscal policy in the inter-war period did not do much for the development of industries in Punjab. Conclusion It is evident from the above study that public investment in the economic overheads has been a powerful factor in bringing about certain far-reaching changes in the Indian economy over the period under study. Apart from being complementary to one another, the bulk of public investment was complementary to the investment in the private sector. In a way, all the sectors of the economy were inter-dependent each stimulating the growth of the other. But, since the magnitude of the public investment involved was not very large as a proportion of the national income and also was fluctuating over the period, the overall impact on the economy was not very impressive. While the introduction of the means of transport and communication hastened the process of commercialisation, it could not take the economy very much beyond the rudimentary stages of industrialisation. The fiscal policy pursued by the Government also impeded the growth of industries in India, while the rates policy followed by the railways encouraged concentration of industries near the ports without reference to other basic locational advantages. The lopsidedness of the industrial development was further accentuated by the uneven distribution of public investment over the different regions. The unimpressive industrial development in the South could partly be explained by the diffusion of even the relatively small amount of public investment over a vast area. The North Eastern region, which received a relatively large share of the investment in railways reached a greater degree of industrialisation as compared to the other regions. This development, however, was the joint product of public investment (which provided the basic overhead facilities) and foreign capital (which provided the supplementary investments necessary to realise the external economies provided by public investment). Insofar as foreign capital was dominant in the plantations, jute and coal mining industries of this region and the profits from these were exported abroad, the benefits arising from public invesment accrued, to a large extent, to foreign nationals. In the case of Punjab, where there was a concentration of investment in irrigation as well as in the means of transport and communication we noticed considerable progress in agriculture and in the growth of trade from the last quarter of the nineteenth century, but since the resource endowments and the fiscal and railway rates policies played a predominant role in determining the pattern of economic development,