CONTENTS

The Indian experience of development does not fit into the neat models put forward by a wide range of 'dependency theorists'. Nor has India been spectacular, either as a success like several east Asian countries or a disaster like many African and Latin American ones. In the context of the historico-structural conditions what emerges is that Indian development so far has led to the reversing of most of the elements of a colonial or peripheral structure rather than leading to the country being turned into a neo-colony. The central contradiction in India today is capitalism and not imperialism, or feudalism and imperialism. 531 'Socialism in One Country' Gorbachev's vision marks a drastic departure from the classical and revolutionary Marxist viewpoint. It is both an inadequate world-view and a deeply flawed guide to practice. The narrow, self-cent redness of Soviet foreign policy is nowhere more vivid than in Gorbachev's final dismissal of the very need of an international. 547 Vol XXIII No 11 March 12, 1988 Testing Time Uneasy Questions The emergence of the vanniyars, Tamil Nadu's largest backward caste, as a powerful sociopolitical force in a state which has instituted a series of 'positive discriminatory' measures for over half a century poses a severe test to the revolutionary movement which has a better mass base among the harijans. 507 While behaviouralism claims to be merely scientific methodology, it really implies the microscopic paradigm. What this method achieves, then, is to circularly 'prove' deductions from the embedded theory. 526 Non-SoIution Privatisation might be worth trying in a few cases as a means of shedding some unimportant or low priority activities. But as a solution to the 'public sector efficiency problem', it merely evades the issue. 554 Price Rise and the Poor The largest contribution to the price rise in the last ten months has come from wage goods, including cereals. 513 Trading with Pakistan More Window Dressing As long as the nation does not learn to protest, defence expenditure will continue to expand, and words and figures will continue to be so woven as to demonstrate to the neighbourhood innocents that retrogression is progress and across-the-border aggression is genteel peace-keeping. 501 Indo-Pak trade can be considerably expanded in the coming years if a serious attempt is made to identify the thousands of small items in which the two countries can trade with each other. 515 Cost of 'Dollar-Link' The constant revisions required in the exchange rate in order to keep the rupee-dollar parity stable has meant that the external value of the rupee has suffered serious erosion against all the major currencies. This has had serious implications for import cost and domestic inflation. 512 Gromyko Memoirs The Gromyko memoirs confirm that the beginning of the Sino-Soviet feud dates from the Taiwan Straits crisis Hitkari House 284 Shahid Bhagatsingh Road Phones 266072/73 Grams Econweekly