THE PAPER CONTROL ORDER 47
On the basis of the production of the mills during that year, it was calculated that the mills would produce 47,575 tons during October and March. It will be found that the Government demand of 41,500 tons represented 87 per cent of the mills production during the six months. Roughly it was 90 per cent, and that is the reason why the order maintained 90 per cent as the figure. Now, the House will understand why it became necessary in November to issue this order. I want to tell the House the measures that the Government has taken in order to increase production of paper.
Of course, as the House will realise, it is not possible for Government to help the paper mills in the importation of additional machinery in order to enable them to increase their production. The difficulty of shipping is quite well known and it is quite beyond the powers of the Government to do anything in the matter. Consequently we have to work out whatever we can to increase the production of paper within the means which are available to us; and I would like to draw the attention of the House to three things which the Government has done and which could be usefully referred to as measures taken to increase production. The Government has appointed a paper production officer, whose duty it is to find out ways and means by which production of paper could be increased
An Honourable Member : Who is this gentleman ?
The Honourable Dr. B. R. Ambedkar : Mr. Bhargava. Secondly, the Government has cut out non-essential luxury varieties of paper and has restricted Government requirements to only a few easily manufactured standard qualities. Thirdly, the Government has been dealing with each mill separately to find out what sort of paper each particular mill, having regard to its machinery and its equipment, can produce to the largest extent. It is estimated at present that as a result of the measures taken to increase production, the increase would be about 12,000 tons.
The next thing that the Government has done in order to ease the situation is to impose cuts, arbitrary cuts, on the demands of the various departments made for paper. These cuts are as follows : provincial and state requirements have been cut down arbitrarily by 10 per cent, which gives a saving of 950 tons. Secondly, so far as the Central Government is concerned, the budgets for paper presented by the various departments which spend paper—their original estimates have been