BOOK RBVIEW 67 the arguments advanced in Facts and Issues.2 There are other things on offer, an appendix on whether devaluation would be sensible, another appendix on "the causes of the slow growth rate of the Indian economy", and so on. Most important from the author's point of view, there are various prescriptions on policy measures to be adopted following the loan, which go well beyond the immediate future, for Brahmananda sees the loan also as affording an occasion for a major reorientation of economic policy in this country. The central thrust of the major part of the book is, however, against the positions adopted in the essays in Facts and Issues', and in any case these positions constitute an essential point of reference from which one can attempt to assess Brahmananda's own arguments. It also turns out that the other parts of the book are less interesting than they might seem. Brahmananda's policy prescriptions (in Chapters V and VI), for example, add relatively little, matters of emphasis and minor eccentricities apart, to what the Government of India itself has set out at greater length in the "Statement of Economic Policies" (hereafter SEP) accompanying its Letter of Intent to the IMF. Thanks to the efforts of N. Ram and an Executive Director of the IMF, rather than to any lapse on the part of our government, the circumstances accompanying the negotiation of the loan, the binding conditions attached to it, and, above all, the nature of the particular package of 'pragmatic' policies that the Government of India has stated in its Letter of Intent that it is committed to, are all well known by now. Readers of Social Scientist will also be familiar with the series of objections raised in the essays in Facts and Issues to the acceptance of the loan and the set of policies to which it commits the Government of India. Nevertheless, while a recapitulation of these objections here is unnecessary, it is probably worth emphasising some points regarding them, if only to avoid some of the hares that Brahmananda chases so energetically. Firstly, if I have understood the arguments in Facts and Issues correctly, the objections are directed not merely at the 'performance clauses' specified by the IMF, but (a) at the general policy thrust which these clauses represent, and (b) more important, at the policy orientation as a whole evident in the full 'Statement of Economic Policies' of the Government of India. From one point of view, it is really immaterial whether this package has been imposed on a reluctant government, or has been voluntarily and actively accepted, or indeed is a product of the initiative of the government itself. A central set of objections are to the package itself rather than to the circumstances of its adoption. There is surely no suggestion in Facts and Issues that had the package been formulated by the Government of India quite independently of any negotiations with the IMF, then it would have been acceptable or non-objectionable, simply by virtue of being a 'sovereign' decision. (In fact, it has been argued elsewhere