70 SOCIAL SCIENTIST Thus while the democratisation that 'glasnost* involves is an inevitable and welcome first step towards the generation of an internal and forward looking critique of the achievements and failures of existing socialist societies, it also carries with it the danger of the reversal of the gains from that tradition itself. Thus any complete assessment of the current reforms in the socialist countries must include both an assessment of the correctness of the questions being asked as well as the nature of the 'experiments* being conducted as answers to these questions. This is all the more crucial because though it is unclear where the line of demarcation between centralised and decentralised planning or between state intervention and markets needs to be drawn, there is a point in the continuum between the former and the latter where 'market autonomism' takes over, leading to macro-economic fluctuations and crises of a kind more typical of capitalism, even within systems where private property is not dominant. The fact that the line of demarcation is unclear is itself a reflection of the fact that the point where that demarcation is made is the exercise of a choice that takes into consideration the sacrifice of macro-economic coordination that a shift to greater decentralisation There are two questions that arise in this context. Firstly, is flexibility at the micro-economic level adequate to ensure that waste, in terms of resource use for any given output or lack of torrespondence between demands on the market and actual supplies, disappears? An affirmative answer assumes that the motivation to achieve such results exist. If they do not, that motivation must be stimulated by rewards and penalties, profits and better returns and the threat of closure and unemployment. That is, the market is no more a benign force that permits greater flexibility, but begins to influence the nature of the system. Secondly, when dealing with inefficiency of the kind spoken above or with the equally important problem of an inadequate rate of innovation, is inadequate flexibility the real issue? Prof. Bagchi gives three reasons why flexibility is crucial. First, the need to meet the challenge of unpredictable changes in consumer preferences and technology that the transition from relative poverty to affluence provides. Second, the need for innovation in the area of civilian technology. And third the need to break down the gigantism of the second Industrial Revolution in order to meet the challenge of the third Industrial Revolution which has involved a change in the nature of production processes and organisations all over the world.