India Response to Glasnost

India' Response to Glasnost Arun Ghosh GLASNOST and perestroika are today household words among the educated elite in the west. Both ideas have also been commented upon extensively in India, so there is some danger that 1 may be repeating what has been said by others already. We may. therefore, leave Gorbachev to pursue his perestroika in the USSR, and examine the implications of Gorbachev's glasnost from the Indian point of view. Incidentally, perhaps (without much fanfare) Deng Xiaoping has turned around the Chinese economy more than Gorbachev's attempt at perestroika in the USSR has done at least so far. More importantly, Deng has stuck only to the perestroika part of Gorbachev's programme; glasnost is not quite what Deng has in mind, and the recent opening up of China to foreign tourists is quite clearly intended to carn China some foreign exchange from tourism rather than anything more.