78 SOCIAL SCIENTIST
This makes one suspect the actual motivation of the government. Undoubtedly the trend towards exempting even the well-to-do mills from the controlled cloth obligation is related to the perceived need on the part of the government to support the sagging profitability of the mill sector. This becomes all the more clear when we note that in the immediate future the burden of the obligation is to largely fall on the NTC mills. The NTG had been formed specifically for the purpose of taking over ^ick' mills, and it appears that the government (and industry) itself was of the view that ^sickness" was at least partly due to the controlled cloth obligation. Hence why is the burden now being shifted onto those very mills?
The new policy is in fact a complete reversal of the position in 1975-76 when the government recognised the differential performance and ability of firms in the industry and had attempted to lay the burden of controlled cloth production on firms not incurring losses. Handing over the obligation to the NTG mills or decentralized sector is merely a way of concealing the fact of subsidizing production at the expense of the exchequer in order to relieve the mill sector of this ^social" burden. And though the policy states that the burden of the subsidy would be borne in an equitable manner by the entire textile industry it is conveniently silent on the exact manner in which this would be done. Such policies only bring out the fact that the government erodes into its own resources to prop up the profits in the private sector. However by doing so it restricts its own investment activity which ultimately affects the growth of the private sector itself.
MRIDUL EAPEN