Miscellaneous - This Day That Age   

dated February 14, 1957: Deshmukh's suggestion

If India does not want to be outpaced in progress by China, she has to evolve methods of "ploughing back" a greater amount of national income into national investment, said Mr. C.D. Deshmukh, former Union Finance Minister, in Ahmedabad on February 12. Presiding over the third annual day function of the Gujarat University School of Social Sciences, he suggested institutionalisation of the various channels of voluntary contributions which had developed in the country in recent years in order to ensure recovery of higher percentage of national income for development activities. Stating that taxes alone could not fill the gap between the availability of resources and the crying needs of the country, he said there were two methods to increase the flow of finance - the institutionalisation of various channels of voluntary contributions which had developed as a result of the launching of community development and other rural schemes, and intensification of the savings drive. Experience had shown that people came forward to contribute large sums for local development works with enthusiasm. This enthusiasm should be utilised for stepping up the tempo of voluntary contributions in the form of different types of cesses. Mr. Deshmukh said as there was a limit to taxation and "the number of privileged class who could pay more taxes is comparatively very small," the Government had to find out forms of taxation which were "less repugnant and more voluntary." The basic problem in a predominantly agricultural country like India was one of stepping up the recovery of a higher percentage of agricultural production as national investment. In China, the national income was nearly double that of India. The agricultural production and the yield per acre were higher than in India, but the more significant fact was that China evolved measures to recover as much as 12 per cent of her agricultural production for national investment. In India, they had recovered hardly three per cent from the peasant community. If China could maintain this rate of national investment, she would outpace India in a considerably short time to come.

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