Public Enterprise in Indian Industry

Abstract

VER THE PAST GENERATION the most interesting experiments in the Otfield of public enterprise have been found in Europe and North America; over the next generation the most interesting experiments may well be found in Asia. This is true not only because Asia's stagnant economies will require public corporations to play a larger role, quite different from that they have played in the West, but also because we can already see a variety of problems and experiments which greatly extends our conception of the role of public enterprise and of the forms in which it can be organized. In this article' our concern is limited to public enterprise in Indian manufacturing industries. It was clear even in 1953-at a rather discouraging midpoint during the First Five-Year Plan-that the public corporations was going to provide the most important source of entrepreneurship and investment in the modern sector of the Indian economy. It was also clear that the Indian public corporations faced, in addition to all the usual problems of such bodies, many practical difficulties not encountered in the West. Ideological problems have played a secondary but not negligible role: the fact that Mr. Nehru's Government is a Socialist one does indeed have some influence on reserved sectors of the economy and on the running of public companies (particularly on attitudes toward manage-