STRUCTURAL ADJUSTMENT AND TI IE STATE 31 initiate another round of price increases to offset this, inflation would rapidly spiral out of control. The correspondence between money and material entitlements would collapse, putting the foundations of civil society under pressure. The State could forestall this sequence of developments through a number of measures. It would have two main options in such a context, which it could use in combination—running an import surplus, or cutting its own expenditure commitments. The greater the recourse to any one of these options, the less would be the need to enforce the other with any measure of rigour. The specific response of the State in any given context would depend upon the political coalition of social classes that constitutes it, and on the external environment within which the economy exists. 'Deflation', or a drastic curtailment of State expenditure, is ostensibly a device that is neutral between social classes in terms of its impact. But the derivative squeeze on consumption has very different implications for different sections of society. In terms of the four-class two-sector model of the market economy, if all the four classes locked in contention were to enjoy roughly equivalent degrees of influence in determining their shares in the social product, then the entire system would overheat and rapidly reach a state of near collapse. But if one or more of the parties were to be marginal participants in the bargaining process—either by virtue of their intrinsic characteristics, or by virtue of State policy—then the system would be better able to maintain its equilibrium in the face of extraneous shocks. In other words, if one of the classes involved were to be economically disenfranchised, and reduced to a marginal position as far as the market mechanism is concerned, then the market economy would be able to withstand shocks either from within or without, with far greater resilience. The point highlights the central contradiction of a market society, which Marx was the first to point out—between the political and juridical equality of a liberal democracy, and the inequality and unfreedom of private property. The right of universal adult suffrage is, in the liberal doctrine, the ultimate freedom. It permits the citizens of a country to 'buy' for themselves, the policy orientations that they want, through the periodic exercise of the franchise. But as even some of the more radical among liberal thinkers have pointed out,9 a regime of private property corresponds to a state of economic disenfranchisement for some, and hence incomplete freedom. In the Indian context, the sectoral distribution of the national income has changed radically over the years, with industry and services together bulking almost twice as large as agriculture in terms of their contribution. Yet, the sectoral distribution of the population has changed little, if at all. Per capita incomes in the agricultural sector have hence, at best stagnated. Together with this, there has been, since the early 1970s, a sustained movement in the terms of trade