62 SOCIAL SCIENTIST In an attempt to place women's economic position within an overall context we focus our attention on the recent Industrial Policy Statement of the Government of India to bring out, among other things, (i) the ineffectiveness of the state's intervention in the Indian economy and the increasing disjuncture that this has wrought on the different forms of production in the economy; (ii) the parasitical existence and functioning of the organized private industrial sector (particularly the large family-based business houses) which have been under no great compulsion to innovate and/or compete on the international market, thereby imparting to the economy a structural rigidity from which the economy is unable to extricate itself and become really dynamic. (iii) the impact, particularly on labour, consequent upon the attempts to send the economy on a global trip. We focus next on the gendered pattern of development and the implications for gender of the policies being pursued in the economy in the name of 'equity' and 'efficiency'. That labour planning does not form part and parcel of any industrial policy is an important but neglected aspect of the story of employment in the country. Consequently the debate on the question, namely, whether or not the liberalization measures of the Indian government will increase or decrease the demand for labour, tends to get sterile and/or is carried on in a vacuous framework inasmuch as there is no real evaluation of the industrial performance of the country over the years. From a gender perspective there is need in the first place, to place the whole issue of the employment/unemployment/underemployment of women within the overall macro discussion of technology and labour. Further, without labouring the (by now well-known) fact of the extremely narrow base of women's employment as far as the organized sector is concerned, we focus our attention more on the education/skill level of even those (few) women workers designated as such by the Census. The issue being highlighted is the need to constantly strive for some parity between the drive to acquire state-of-the-art technology (to compete on an international level and scale) and the upgradation of knowledge and skill level among the population. The basic educational level of the labour force, and within this of women labour, is so abysmally low (as revealed by Census data), that even assuming the new measures throw up employment opportunities on a reasonably large scale, it is not clear how far the existing population with its present skill level will benefit. The problem gets compounded in the case of women, since here the question is not just of bridging the (literacy) gap between men and women, but also fighting patriarchal and class oppression that inhibits provision of a conducive atmosphere and access to women to acquire skills and high quality continuous training.