One of the hon. Members, Shri Sankar Ghose a very experienced member of this house who had also been in the planning commission and knows the intricacies of how the things are being worked out-has been pleased to state here that rate of inflation is very high and, added to that, the balance of payments position is going to be very bad. Compared with the percentage that we have worked out for the tenth plan as a whole for imports, for the first year the import bill has risen very high. In presenting this report, my first duty would be thank the Dhebar commission for preparing this valuable document. The commission have gone deep into the various aspects of this problem and have produced an important and valuable document. The commission had to tour a lot and they had to put in very hard work. I should like to convery my thanks and congratulations to the chairman of the commission, Shri Dhebar, and also to his other colleagues for this useful contribution. As the house is aware, the problem of the scheduled tribes has been constantly engaging the attention of the government since the constitution was framed and adopted. Still the government were not satisfied with the actual progress made. It was in that context that the government appointed two committees before the Dhebar commission was appointed. The first was the elwin committee which specially dealt with the problem of the tribal blocks. The second committee was appointed on the suggestion of the estimates committee to study the problem of the backward communities specially. On top of that, in pursuance of article 339 of the constitution, the government appointed the Dhebar commission and now it is for the house to give its opinion on the recommendations made by the commission. Our desire is that as soon as the parliament this house as well as the other house-has discussed this report and expressed its views, we will go ahead with the recommendations made and we will certainly like that they are implemented as early as possible.
