NEW DELHI

Liberalisation of Economic Policies World Banks New Push THE Indian delegation to the annual meeting of the so-called Aid India Consortium under the aegis of the World Bank at Paris would lack this year its customary aplomb and assurance. The delegation which is traditionally composed of senior officials in the union finance ministry will have to work under an intense two-pronged pressure. The political tensions which have surfaced in the past few months and were wholly unexpected for the finance ministry bureaucracy have induced the political masters to revert with remarkable alacrity to radical rhetoric. This the finance ministry bureaucracy had smugly thought belonged to a bad past which had been left behind by the young, dynamic and pragmatic political leadership at the helm of government affairs. The Indian side at the Paris parleys on western aid commitment would, therefore, they believed, have smooth-sailing and would not have to bother with the problems that radical posturing throws up for their aid diplomacy with the World Bank and the member-countries of the Aid India Consortium. That assumption no longer holds and the Indian delegation to the session of the consortium will be facing a difficult and ticklish task when it is closely questioned as seems most likely about the stability of economic and social policies, if not of the political regime itself, in India.