2 SOCIAL SCIENTIST capital in the rich industrial countries to rcimpose an unequal international order, at a time when developing countries are seen to be weak, divided, economically distressed and ideologically confused. This matter is of special relevance to us today because India is currently being forced to accept the very same structural adjustment package, which comes accompanied by the other current catch-words of 'liberalisation* and 'globalisation*. These policies have been strongly supported by certain sections of our elite and middle classes, whose political, social and economic links to metropolitan countries are increasingly closer than their relationship to the working masses of India. But this support should not blind us to the reality that this set of policies goes fundamentally against the interests of the mass of our people, and essentially serves the purposes of metropolitan capital. They must Be strongly resisted if any alternative and more equitable path of development is to be hoped for. The very strength of the pressures which are insisting on the adoption of these policies requires a clear understanding of the roots of the present crisis and the motivation of the liberalisers, if such pressures are to be effectively resisted. This issue of Social Scientist is therefore devoted to various aspects of the Structural Adjustment Programmes of the IMF and World Bank, as well as possible alternative adjustment strategies for India today. The current economic crisis is possibly the most serious one the country has faced since Independence. At no time before this has the vulnerability to international capital been greater, both in terms of direct and indirect pressures on domestic policy and in terms of the ability of capital flows to destabilize the economy. It also comes at a time of greater ideological assertion by votaries of free market policies inside and outside the country. In a proximate sense, this crisis is the result of a set of processes under way over the past decade, in which externally, national economic sovereignty has been progressively undermined through continued macro-economic imbalances which necessitated greater reliance on external financing. This was actually abetted by international agencies like the IMF and World Bank, which encouraged India to borrow increasingly from the short-term international capital market in order to step up the aggregate rate of growth to the neglect of internal and external balance. Internally, social and economic inequalities have been heightened by the enrichment of some groups at the expense of those already underprivileged. In a deeper sense, however, this crisis is the culmination of the whole pattern of post-Independence development, reflecting the internal contradictions of the 'liberal* developmental state as well as the politics of the mixed economy. Within a basically capitalist system, a primary function of the state has been to protect private property rights, and thus to deny the possibility of any radical