2 SOCIAL SCIENTIST unorganised sector workers, taken as a whole, has worsened in recent years. A number of questions arise in this context : given the hiatus, and a growing one at that, between the organied and the unorganised sector workers, what can be said of the political role of the former ? And indeed a prior question : what sort of political attitudes do organised sector workers have ? How can the workers outside of the organised sector, who are so numerous and growing, be brought into the ambit of trade union and political organisation ? What sort of movements have been active among them and informed with what sort of perceptions ? And insofar as women workers are a crucially important segment of the unorganised sector workers, what are the specific problems faced by them in their processes of work, as well as of getting organised ? Some of these questions are taken up for discussion in the various papers included in the current number of Social Scientist. Kristoffel Lieten's paper, which is a fall out of a larger study on the Dutch multinationals in India, gives the results of a sample survey on the attitudes of workers employed in these units. It explodes in the process some of the myths propagated about the imperviousness of this section of workers to radical political ideas. The two papers by Maitreyi Krishna Raj and U. Kalpagam are concerned with women workers in the informal sector; between them they give important insights into the differing perceptions among those engaged in organising this section of workers. Sudha Pai's paper is a useful complement to these two papers, dealing, as it does, with the issue of women agricultural workers, and the impact of technological change upon their employment and work-pattern. And finally, the paper by Ashok Rao, which discusses the current predicament of public sector units as well as their potential for generating self-reliant growth, carries forward the debate which has been raging for some time in the country around the role of the public sector.