P. R. Brahmananda, THE IMF LOAN AND INDIA'S ECONOMIC FUTURE, Himalaya Publishing House, Bombay, January 1982, pp. viii and 96 (including nine appendices and statistical tables), Rs. 10. THIS short book (the main text, excluding the appendices and tables^ is only 50 pages long) was released around the time of the recent Book Fair in Delhi, accompanied by a generous dose of publicity. Brahmananda appears to have been persuaded to write it in large part by the appearance in November last year of the set of essays, The IMF Loan: Facts and Issues, published by the Government of West Bengal 1 (hereafter referred to as Facts and Issues). Brahmananda is categorically all for the loan. The fact that "an expert storehouse of financial and monetary information concerning most countries of the world" (p.3), "the technically most competent and financially most scrupulous organisation" (p. 1) has sanctioned the loan should itself be "a matter of great jubilation to proponents of the cause of the Third World....That such an organisation should have found India so highly creditworthy is a matter to be deeply pondered over"! (p.l). Many may fail to recognise the IMF in this bland description, but at least Brahmananda echoes the sentiments of the Government of India: the very fact that the IMF has agreed to the loan is apparently sufficient cause for self-congratulation, and almost sufficient sign that God's in his heaven and all's right with the world. Nevertheless, in some quarters "a hue and cry has been raised that India's economic sovereignty has been surrendered"; and Brahmananda fears that because of "the great interest taken by the West Bengal Government and its spokesmen, attitudes may get crystallised towards the loan, particularly among gullible youth, primarily on the basis of political and ideological considerations, which have been carefully mixed up with purely economic considerations" (p. vi). He sees his book, then, apparently as an attempt to persuade those "whose minds are open" to take an "objective" view of the loan, particularly perhaps those who might have been swayed by the essays •in Facts and Issues. There is a sombre list of charges against Facts and Issues: the book, it seems, did not present "all the true facts" of the case; did not examine "all the relevant questions and issues" or "all the feasible empirical evidence"; and, in any case, arrived at conclusions which did not follow from the facts and evidence, but which were introduced extraneously. The book under review is not solely an attempted refutatoin of