Plans and Perspectives

By B. G. Verghese

Summary

B. G. Verghese’s ‘Plans and Perspectives’, reproduced by the Forum of Free Enterprise from The Times of India of 14 December 1960, opens with a sharp diagnostic claim: ‘Two kinds of planning co-exist in Delhi each destructive of the other.’ The Government, Verghese argues, has become so preoccupied with noticing this detail or perhaps with accepting this situation as a reflection of its own ambivalent thinking, that the real object of planning — to promote production and progress and not thwart initiative and inhibit growth — has been lost. He uses the case of natural gas at the Naharkatiya and Barauni oilfields in Assam to anchor the critique with hard numbers: roughly 38 million cubic feet a day of ‘associated’ gas (rising with the production of 2.75 million tons of refined oil), plus eleven million cubic feet of ‘non-associated’ gas, of which only a fraction is currently being put to use. The Nunmati refinery uses some, another 27 million cubic feet is meant to be utilised by 1962-63, and ‘all this gas must be utilised or will have to be flared.’

The second half of the leaflet narrates how the State of Assam and the Union Government have responded — a 50,000 kW thermal station at Naharkatiya, a fertiliser plant of 32,000 tons of nitrogen per annum, four public sector projects projected to absorb about 22 million cubic feet a day, a cement plant delayed for want of limestone, and a separate gas pipeline to Tinsukia and Dibrugarh. But Verghese is most exercised by what has happened to the private sector. An absolute minimum of 38 million cubic feet of gas per day will soon be available, of which not less than 16 million cubic feet must either be used or be flared, and proposals from licensees offering capital and foreign collaborators — for synthetic rubber, intermediates, chemicals, polythene, carbon black, a steel plant at Bareilly — have been quietly blocked on the ground that petro-chemicals are ‘strategic’, and so must be reserved for the public sector. The Industrial Policy Resolution, he writes, was ‘not drafted with any profitability test in view,’ and the practical effect is that 16 million cubic feet of associated gas, equivalent to about 350,000 tons of oil per annum, are at risk of being wasted while the public-sector alternative drags on.

The closing pages widen the lens from gas to politics. Verghese ties the under-utilisation of Naharkatiya gas to the ‘cultural’ aspects of the recent Assam riots, to communal discontent, and to an Assam manifesto cited as evidence that ordinary people would ‘be denied the right to provide work for its people and the opportunity of advancement to satisfy some fad.’ His verdict, set out as the leaflet’s parting line, is unsparing: ‘Naharkatiya gas is only a symbol of a wider malaise — an ideological masochism, an infirmity of purpose and a complete disregard of the cardinal fact that we have no time. It is already high time.’ A footer reminds the reader that the views expressed in the leaflet do not necessarily represent those of the Forum of Free Enterprise.

Key points

• Verghese frames Indian planning as internally contradictory: two competing kinds of planning operate in Delhi simultaneously, each destructive of the other.

• He uses the Naharkatiya and Barauni gas fields as a case study, quantifying roughly 38 million cubic feet/day of ‘associated’ gas plus 11 million cubic feet of ‘non-associated’ gas that must be utilised or flared.

• On the public-sector side, the Assam Government plans a 50,000 kW thermal station and a gas pipeline to Tinsukia and Dibrugarh, while the Union Government has approved a fertiliser plant for 32,000 tons of nitrogen per annum and four projects absorbing about 22 million cubic feet/day.

• Verghese argues that private-sector licensee proposals — for synthetic rubber, polythene, carbon black, and a steel plant at Bareilly, backed by capital and foreign collaborators — have been blocked by the Industrial Policy Resolution’s classification of petro-chemicals as ‘strategic’ and reserved for the public sector.

• He estimates 16 million cubic feet of ‘associated’ gas (the equivalent of 350,000 tons of oil per annum) is at risk of being flared because of regulatory delay rather than economic necessity.

• Strategic-industry reservation, he contends, was drafted without any profitability test and amounts to a refusal of corporate profits as a legitimate source of capital formation.

• He links the gas under-utilisation to the recent Assam riots and a perceived ‘cultural’ upheaval, citing local discontent at being denied work for the sake of doctrine.

• The leaflet’s polemical centre is its closing aphorism: Naharkatiya gas is only a symbol of a wider malaise — ‘ideological masochism, an infirmity of purpose and a complete disregard of the cardinal fact that we have no time.’

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