WOMEN IN DARK TIMES 15 scientific thesis for its change to an alternative infrastructure. The demise of the Soviet Union, which had been the working out in history of such an alternative, has called into question this idea of historical intervention. In this situation the rhetoric of development based on the exigency of market forces and propagated by dominant ideology does sometimes affect leftist thought itself. We sometimes find ourselves succumbing to the language of unreason, the language of power, in our anxiety to recover our position of advantage in the ideological arena. A reflection of this crisis in the realm of gender-issues is to be found in the fact that as more and more space is given within the implementation of government policy to women's problems, the more laws there are for the protection of women, the more schemes there are to provide them some means of livelihood, feminism seems to have exhausted its cause. Yet the injustice, inequality and oppression remain. Without a thesis for a change in the total infrastructure, feminism itself falls into a deadly langour. The struggle for the left in the arena of culture today is a struggle for the recovery of its own independent language, i.e., its own independent perception of social change. To think of culture as a mere ancillary of politics has on occasions been a failure of the left. But the ideological strength of the left has inhered in the continuous exposure of the struggle for the possession of the mind, of the politics in culture, which class-rule seeks to keep hidden. This is a necessary struggle also for the women who live in dark times. NOTES AND REFERENCES The first version of this text was presented in Madras on 6.3.93 as the Janaki Ammal Memorial Lecture instituted by the All India Democratic Women's Association. 1. Hannah Arendt, Men in Dark Times, Harmondworth: Penguin, 1973. 2. Ibid., pp. 8-9. 3. Hindustan Times, 7.12.92. 4. Economic Times, 15.2.93. 5. Unpublished Report of Women's Delegation to Bhopal, Ahmedabad and Surat. 6. Palmiro Togliatti, Lectures on fascism, 1976, p. 9. 7. Jay Dubashi in Organiser, 15.3.92. 8. Economic Times, 26.1.93. 9. Text of President's Address, Budget Session, 22 February, 1993. 10. 'The Likely Impact of Economic Liberalisation and Structural Adjustment on Food Security System in India'. Unpublished paper presented by Utsa Patnaik in collaboration with Subhasini All at National Workshop organised by ILO and National Women's Commission on Employment, Equality and Impact of Economic Reform on Women, 27-29 January, 1993. 11. Finance Minister Mr. Manmohan Singh's Budget Speech, 17 February, 1993.