PEASANT PRODUCTION IN THE CONTEXT OF EXPORT PROMOTION 27 This does not mean that India too has not joined the growing band of economies which as a consequence of increasing external indebtedness are obliged to order their internal economic affairs in the interests of their international creditors. Hesitant policy shifts towards greater 'market-friendliness* had taken place from as early as 1985, but a decisive shift occurred from mid-1991 following a crisis of short-term capital flight, with the devaluation of the rupee and the liberalisation of the terms of entry of foreign capital, combined with .subsidy cuts. The effects of the shift in the policy-regime towards greater 'market-friendliness' have become quickly evident for the rural sector in an acceleration in the rate of inflation and a decline in rural real wage earnings. The purpose of this paper, however, is not to analyse the impact on agriculture of the recent policy changes, but rather to situate this impact within a longer term perspective on the general impact of commercialisation particularly with regard to the satisfaction of subsistence needs by peasant producers. To this question is related the question of the ability of capitalist production, which has been growing apace, to achieve a high enough rate of productive transformation to make a dent on the problem of unemployment and of poverty, in the specific context of a labour-surplus agriculture. COMMODITISATION AND FOOD SELF-SUFFICIENCY The effects that production for the market have on the availability of basic foodgrains for the cultivating peasantry and labourers, are by now quite clear if we study the experience of not only India but the developing countries of Latin America and of Africa. There is a remarkable sameness in the story everywhere despite the otherwise enormous differences in initial structural conditions. The 'sameness' relates to the decline of production per head and usually also decline in per head availability of foodgrains. This decline is not a result of any overall decline of all types of crop production per head, but a differential decline of the staple foodgrains consumed by the peasantries of these countries in particular, which has been accompanied often by a substantial rise in the per head production of the non-staple and commercial crops. We must therefore disabuse our minds of the idea that foodgrains production per head decline is merely part of a general problem of agricultural production related to adverse trends in rainfall, deforestation and such other factors which would necessarily affect all agricultural production. On the contrary, in many of the countries in question there has been a vigorous process of growth of capitalist production which has led to a productive transformation by way of higher crop yields and changes in the cropping structure towards higher-value crops. This has .been quite consistent, however; in fact,