126 SOCIAL SClEkTtsT being recommended to a country like India involve, among other things, a major liberalization of industrial and trade policy, devaluation of the country's currency, a squeeze on net credit to the government sector; an across-the board increase in administered prices and a cut in subsides on items of mass consumption such as food. The freeing of imports inevitably leads to a fall in the utilisation of already installed capacity and an accentuation of balance of payments difficulties. And the squeeze on credit to the government sector necessitates a cut back in public investment and expenditure. Such a cut in expenditure would not only slow down the rate of growth of the economy and therefore of employment but also necessitate a cut in subsidies on items like food that currently offer some succour to a poverty stricken population. The squeeze in real incomes that this implies would be aggravated by internal liberalization, which involves price decontrol as well the permission to close down unviable capacity in the private sector. While this would raise profitability in the private sector and allow capitalists to relocate their surpluses in the more profitable areas of industry, it would also set off a price spiral as well result in the loss of jobs for thousands of workers who have been rendered redundant by the "sickness" that capitalist devloment has generated in a large section of indigenous industry. Futher, to expand the economic space available for profitable operation of the monopoly houses, the protection provided to the small scale sector would have to be done away with, adding thousands of small enterpreneuers and the self-employed to the labour force, since they would be in no position to face up to competition from the monopolies. Finally, these monopolies, while drawing some benefits from such a strategy would have to part with a large share of their profits to transnational capital, which as a result of the liberalization would be provided relatively freer access to the domestic market. Thus the so-called "new economic policy" is nothing but a replica of policies pushed through by imperialism in a number of countries in Latin America and Asia with disastrous consequences. It merely ensures that in a situation of global crisis, the transnational corporations have new frontiers to exploit, at the expense of the working people in the country. But the hope that in the process it would be provided with a small share of the surplus encourages Indian monopoly to join hands with these forces, hastening the process of growing dependence on foreign finance capital. 1. World Bank, Industrial Strategy and Policy Division, December 9, 1986. 2. R. K. Hazari, The Structure of the Corporate Private Sector : A Study of Concentration Ownership and Control, Asia Publishing House, Bombay, 1997. 3. Mr nopolies Inquiry Commission Report, Vols. 1 and 2, New Delhi 1969. See also Aurobindo Ghosh, "Monopoly in India Industry : An Approach", Economic and Political Weekly, Annual No. Feb. 1972. 4. Ibid. 5. For a useful discussion of these issues see C.T. Kurien, "Small Sector in New