Excerpts from Weekly Notes, 26 September 1959, in The Economic Weekly, ed. Sachin Chaudhuri, page 1320. (Since 1966 the weekly is called The Economic and Political Weekly.)
Industry
Despite the so-called crisis of confidence on the food front, nobody expects the programme for heavy industries to be assigned anything less than top priority in the Third Five-Year Plan. Even so, it is good that the Minister for Industry, Shri Manubhai Shah, should have drawn attention to this explicitly in his address to the Mysore Chamber of Commerce some days back. Unless a major expansion of heavy industries forms the core of the Third Plan, it cannot claim to be a step forward towards the ultimate goal of industrialisation. Besides emphasising this point, Shri Manubhai Shah threw some light on the elements that would make up the programme for heavy industries in the next Plan. Inevitably, the steel industry and power generation get the most attention. The target for steel at 10 to 11 million tons will be nearly twice the probable output at the end of the Second Plan; and in respect of electricity, capacity will go up from 7.5 million kw at present to over 15 million kw. The complex of industrial units that would be built around these two is truly impressive, if one assumes that the Minister was talking about projects on which Government had taken firm decisions. And there is good reason for assuming so. The heavy machinery project, which will produce every two years a complete steel plant of one-million-ton capacity, is already under way. So are the foundry forging plant and the heavy electricals plant. The Minister added that Government was planning to establish several medium-size foundry forges in the country and two more units for the manufacture of heavy electrical equipment. The list mentioned by the Minister also includes four aluminium plants and a fertiliser factory in every State. This is apparently only a part of the programme for industries; but even this part is big enough to impress.
Shri Manubhai Shah said something else which is likely to be of considerable significance in the future. While he did not say anything about the public or private sector in respect of forges or aluminium plants, he made the point that in such fields as the manufacture of heavy electricals and intermediaries for the drugs, plastics and dye-stuffs industry, Government would not bar privately‑owned units. And speaking as he was in Bangalore, he was careful enough to indicate that quite a few of the new industrial units would be set up in the South. To be sure, he has not given us the whole programme and there is going to be more to come, but what he has said should mollify some of the disgruntled.