From 50 Years Ago: Second Telephone Facotry

The announcement by the Union Minister for Transport and Communications that the Government has decided to set up a second telephone factory must have surprised those who have flipped through the pages of the Third Plan. Neither in the section on ‘Posts and Telegraphs’ nor in the list of industrial projects to be undertaken by the Central Government is there any mention of a new telephone factory….The total cost of the p rogrammes of the Posts and Telegraphs Department in the Third Plan, including that of the proposed teleprinter factory, is esti-mated at Rs 79 crores, of which Rs 41 crores are accounted for by expansion of telephone services. The Plan provides for about 2 lakh new direct connections and for the conver-sion of 50,000 manual lines into automatic lines… Taking into account the estimated addi-tional demand for 5 lakh connections during the Third Plan, the Department had estimated that the Plan would have to provide 7 lakh new telephones in all... It is difficult to believe that the target for telephones was ever taken seriously by the Government. Soon such instances are bound to multiply and the by now-familiar spectacle of some programmes bulging at the seams and others, not strictly on merit, being axed will begin to unfold. And then, to add insult to injury, some Minister will come along and call the whole thing “flexible planning”!