STRUCTURAL ADJUSTMENT AND THE STATE 45 inescapable, and India would soon have to embark upon the road that most countries of Latin America and Africa have been traversing since the early-1980s. The human, social and political costs of fiscal austerity have been documented with a wealth of illustrations by the recent report of the South Commission, headed by the African statesman, Julius Nyerere. In much of Latin America and Africa, the South Commission observed, per capita income fell in the 1980s, and most vital indicators of quality of life—such as life expectancy at birth, child mortality, and school enrolment deteriorated. Social tensions increased, and institutions of governance fell into turmoil: 'Governments and political systems, unable to deliver basic goods and services to their people, found themselves increasingly rejected and their legitimacy challenged . . . In the face of all these social factors, recourse to oppression and military force was in some cases seen by governments as the only way to keep the situation under some degree of control'.25 The South Commission noted that among the few countries that managed to avoid these pitfalls were the two most populous nations of the world—India and China. But it went on to observe ominously that 'the considerable increase' in the external debt of these two nations in the 1980s might 'significantly affect their future development'. All countries that imagined that they could purchase internal political stability through external commercial credits, have rather quickly been disabused. Submission to the tutelage of the IMF is ultimately the price that they have had to pay. As IMF conditionalities have begun to bite, popular unrest has grown, drawing forth a proportionately repressive response from the State. On this reckoning, it is just a matter of time before the facade of consensus politics in India is ripped aside, and the naked coercive power of the State comes into view. NOTES AND REFERENCES 1. Reference may be made to the chapter entitled 'Of the Wages of Labour', in The Wealth of Nations, (Edwin Cannan edition, the Modern Library, New York, 1937). 2. See for instance, A.L. Macfie, The Individual in Society: Papers on Adam Smith, London, 1967, pp 109 ft. 3. C.B. MacPherson, Democratic Theory: Essays in Retrieval, Oxford, 1972, essay 1. 4. See Karl Marx and Friedrich En gels. The German Ideology, Moscow, 1972, page 42: 'the division of labour . . implies the distribution, and indeed the unequal distribution, both quantitative and qualitative of labour and its products, hence property'. And 'property' in turn, is defined as 'the power of disposing of the labour power of others'. 5. See The Wealth of Nations, op. dt, pp 670 ft.