The Feldman-Mahalanobis model has played a very important role in shaping the industrialisation strategies of China and India and, of course, earlier the Soviet Union. An unstated, but crucial assumption in this model is that there exists a sufficiently large surplus of wage goods in the final/agricultural sector for the wage goods constraint not to impose limitations on the industrialisation possibilities. The paper attempts to examine the validity of this assumption in both India and China. It is argued that the wage goods constraint has been significantly constrictive in both the countries. A simple theoretical model is also attempted to bring out the consequences of such a circumstance.