SOCIAL ^iJLiNllM 2 policy ^nd exposes the facile nature of the generalisations about export-led growth "and '"public sector inefficiency "which have been floating around in the media lately, C.P. Chandrashekhar^s paper underscores the seriousness of the payments position by making statistical projections, based on a careful analysis of past data, of the different elements entering into the balance of payments. The paper thus questions the very assumptions underlying current trade policy. Interestingly the paper was written before the figures for the i current year became available; these figures, while confirming the general drift of the paper "s analysis, show the actual situation to be more dis -mal than anybody had suspected. Utsa Patnaik's paper on anti-poverty schemes is simultaneously a critique of the entire stategy of planning, especially of plan-financing, in the country, which is designed to engender a profit -inflation " of the sort that even John Maynard Keynes had warned against; the new turn in economic-policy, she argues will only carry this profit-inflation even further. The current number also carries two important papers on our neighbouring economies .Much discussion has taken place in India as well as abroad about the precise nature and implications of the changes in economic policy and organisation introduced in the post-cultural revolution period in China; Arun Prokas Chatterjee's piece detailing his discussions with Chinese economists and officials and his own personal impressions during a trip to China should be of interest in this context .The paper by Shaikh Muhammad Rashid who was entrusted with the main responsibility for implementing land reforms in Pakistan under Bhutto, about the contents of, and the problems faced by, those reforms has an obvious documentary significance in addition to the information it provides.