2 SOCIAL SCIENTIST
talking of the dynamics of extant capitalist economies? Second, how does China fit into this analysis? If it is on the way to a full restoration of capitalism, as has happened in the USSR and Eastern Europe, then how do we explain its remarkable economic performance precisely during this restoration, in contrast to that of the latter? On the other hand, if this performance is limited in some way to the fact of the Communist Party remaining in power, then how is the economic atrophy, a feature supposedly of bureaucratic degeneration, negated despite the undoubted continuance of bureaucratisation? Third, if domination by a proto-bourgeoisie resulting in economic alienation of the workers could lead to a collapse of socialism, then how is it that despite domination by a full-fledged bourgeoisie, which one might have thought would result in far greater economic alienation of the workers, capitalism, far from collapsing, appears well-entrenched? There can be several possible answers to this question, but each of them would raise a host of further questions. To say all this is merely to underline the fact that while the conclusions from Habib's bold and sincere attempt are unexceptionable, several additional dimensions have to be added to our analysis of what happened.
It is often suggested that the so-called 'retreat' of the State, characteristic of new economic policy-regimes in India and elsewhere, really represents a transition to a more blatantly partisan State which explicitly makes 'national interest' identical with the interest of certain specific social classes; a corollary is drawn that this transition would be associated with a corresponding shift to more and more authoritarian forms of governance. C.P. Bhambhri in his paper joins issue with this argument in the Indian context. The Indian State, he argues, is not a 'fully formed State', and lacks appropriate instruments for implementing and enforcing an authoritarian regime. In such a situation the emergence of social instability could well give rise to a range of other disturbing scenarios: episodes of aimless social violence, with a helpless State watching from the sidelines, or even a tendency towards Balkanisation. The other side of the picture, in a sense, is captured in Ncera Chandhoke's article. In an interesting study of the social organisation of urban space, she makes the point that what has emerged in urban India is not a stable, ordered and organised wage-labour force, but a vast uncontrolled urban mass, located in squatter settlements, engaged largely in the informal economy, uncontrolled by and autonomous of all disciplinary mechanisms, with a great capacity for outbursts, but little capacity for sustained struggles for social transformation.
Finally, Modhumita Roy's paper on 'The Englishing of India' analyses the motivations that underlay the ready acceptance of English by the different elements of the colonial Indian society. In the matter of English education, she argues, not much has changed since the early nineteenth century, even forty-odd years after independence.