52 SOCIAL SCIENTIST of course, require active intervention of "a new social class of mediators... upper and middle class in their origin..." These sensitized "middle class educated youth"3 are already working among the masses to accomplish a number of functions like organizing relief works, taking up developmental programmes etc and are also in the process of building up a democratic consciousness among the people. The proponents of the NPF thesis of social transformation claim that the preoccupation with the capture of state power should be substituted by constructive work. The stress on basic economic demands should be properly blended with the socio-cultural or superstructural reform. They include in the category of NPFs, organizations like Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, Lokayan, AVARD, SWRC and various other groups working among tribals and the feminist organizations. However, ironically, they refuse to include organizations based on religion, engaged in constructive work in this category, probably because of the fact that the latter organizations are backward looking, obscurantist and view the word 'polities' with suspicion. They may, however, like to make an exception in the case of liberation theologists. It may be mentioned here that the strength of these so-called backlash organizations like Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Jamait-e-Islami outmatches the strength of all the voluntary organizations put together and their mutual connections are rather deep-rooted. Despite the alleged failure of mainstream parliamentary democracy, in particular the party system, the proponents of voluntary organizations or NPFs are very keen on building bridges with the so-called national opposition parties, especially the regional ones. The grassroots organizations are the basis of their theoretical scheme of a decentralized democratic polity; regional parties occupy the intermediate space and the aggregation of the efforts of these disparate groups with diverse value-orientations is the way out of the present centralised and corrupt authoritarian set up. The communist parties and their front organisations, of course, are too insignificant a force and it is for these parties to spell out their stance vis-a-vis the new revolutionary force i.e. NPFs. On their own, NPFs are thoroughly disillusioned with the traditional Left's rigid stances and anti-intellectual prejudice. In a recent contribution to The Marxist, Prakash Karat, one of the important activists of the CPI (M), has however thought it proper to spell out his party's stand on the proliferation of the NPFs in our country. Karat has demonstrated with empirical evidence the fact that most of these are funded by dubious foreign outfits. In this connection, he has sounded a warning about the imperialist strategy of whipping up divisive, secessionist and reactionary movements in India to diffuse the united resistance of underprivileged sections of the society to authoritarian and anti-people measures of the Indian state. It is pertinent to point out here that it was the CPI (M) which first exposed the conspiracy being hatched by the imperialists by imposing conditionalitics through an IMF loan. Today, all social scientists, including Rajni Kothari, are seeing the