INDUSTRIAL POLICY FOR WEST BENGAL 107 units will be built to create additional employment for the rural poor, to satisfy some of their basic consumption needs and to provide many of the inputs that the peasantry will need to improve crop production.-One natural corollary of the strategy will be to shift the resources away, relatively if not absolutely, from the Calcutta metropolitan region. This will make it possible to develop the severely neglected regions of western West Bengal and North Bengal. 15 Given the difficult resource position of the State government, it will have to seek every now and then additional funds from outside for promoting industrial growth. Strengthening the public sector should be a cardinal principle with the national financial institutions; ^ such fudds should therefore be readily forthcoming from them. If, beyond this, further resources are called for, it is for the Union Government to ensure their availability. Where foreign exchange is needed for a particular industrial project, it is to be expected that the Centre will allow the State government to draw upon the country's ample exchange reserves rather than ask it to seek accommodation from external sources. 16 There is the allied issue of technological assistance from external sources. In case indigenous technology is lacking in a particular area, the State government should not be averse to inducting foreign skills and expertise. Its preference would however be for the induction of technology from the socialist countries, since our experience indicates that these countries can be depended upon to offer meaningful support to the public sector. The terms under which this technology is to be imported would have to be settled in consultation with the Centre. Centre-State Relations 17 The constraints under which a State government has to operate under the existing constitutional arrangements cannot but affect industrial policy prescriptions too. It is thus necessary to reiterate here the Left Front's demand for a major modification in the allocation of powers between the Centre and the States in such matters as industrial licensing, the regulation of industries and arrangements concerning institutional finance. The Industrial Development and Regulation Act must be suitably amended so as to enable the State governments to assume powers to investigate into the affairs of individual industrial units. 18 For effective redress of the problem of regional imbalances in industrial growth, it is important that the Central government is urged. upon to accept the three-fold principle of (a) the equalization of prices of all industrial raw materials throughout the country, (b) the equalization of freight for these materials for all parts of the country, and (c) State-wise distribution of all industrial raw materials on the basis of actual requirement. 19 One major reason for the industrial set-back in West Bengal in the more recent period is the policy pursued by the national financial