INDIAN ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT 45 Lastly, the report notes that steps taken from the second half of the 1970's have facilitated a liberalisation of import policy and have facilitated easier access for foreign capital in India. This then is the package of liberalisation. Indeed, this is the package of ^dependence'5. And the IMF team visting India in early 1983, supervising India's track record at implementing the "structural adjustment" programme, is reported to have said that it was ((... quite happy with the government's moving in the track set by the Fund...".9 It is not necessary to elaborate further on how widely, indeed how dangerously widely, this 'track5 is off the one we had set forth on when India made a "tryst with destiny". Perhaps it is too soon to suggest that the process has gone beyond repair, but clearly it has reached crisis proportions. The process of debt repayment which will begin soon enough will entail further pressures on India to depart from the "national consensus". Indeed it would seem altogether inappropriate to refer to "self-reliance" any longer as constituting a national goal. There is no longer any national consensus to even talk about. It has crumbled under the sectarian pressure of class interest. Already danger signals are being sent from different sectors of the economy fbrussing attention on the hazards of this path. A recent study by the IGMR and by eminent nutritionists in India has illustrated how arable land is being diverted from food crops, especially the poorman's food like inferior cereals, pulses, etc, to exportable crops like soybean. The study warns us against the long-run dangers of such diversion from the viewpoint of the nutritional status of the Indian people. Even in the manufacturing sector the disastrous results of import liberalisation have woken up the business classes. However these counter-pressures have to wage war with strong lobbies of those who, at least in the short run, seem to benefit from the present policy. When "fly-by-night" operators have taken charge who do you appeal to against this treason? (This paper was presented at the seminar on "Perspectives on America and South Asia^ organised at the American Studies Research Centre, Hyderabad, April 21-23, 1983. The author wishes to thank friends from Sri Lanka at the seminar who, having lived through the experience of IMF dominance, appeared clearly wiser than we were). 1 Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India, London, 1951, 3rd edition, p 372. 2 Ashok Mitra, "Self-Reliance and Economic Growth", Golden Jubilee Memorial Lecture, Sydenham College of Commerce and Economics, Bombay, February 1982. 3 Prabhat Patnaik, "Imperialism and the Growth of Indian Capitalism", in R Blackburn (ed), Explosion in a Subcontinent, Penguin, 1975, p 61. 4 A K Bagchi, Political Economy of Under development, Cambridge University Press, 1982. 5 J K Galbraith, A Life in Our Times, Houghten Mumin Co, 1981, p 440. 6 For an interesting and comprehensive explanation for the crisis, see Prabhat Patnaik and S K Rao, "Towards an Explanation of Crisis in a Mixed Underdeveloped Economy", Economic <2? Political Weekly, Annual Number, 1977; Prabhat