42 SOCIAL SCIENTIST out in 1991-92 to shore up the balance of payments. Foreign exchange and financial sector reforms have had a positive impact on the balance of payments position primarily due to the financial inflows. It may be noted, incidentally, that only a very small proportion of this has been direct foreign investment.2 The easing of the foreign exchange constraint has enabled the removal of the severe import compression policy followed in the first year of the reforms. Exports have also picked up but have not been on a scale to have any visible impact on the domestic economy. On the domestic front, the above policies, as expected, have had a strong recessionary impact. The CSO has estimated that the growth in GDP declined to 1.2 per cent in 1991-92 and picked up to 4.2 per cent in 1992-93 and 3.8 per cent in 1993-94. But this is well below the performance in the eighties. Across sectors there was negative growth both in the primary and manufacturing sectors in 1991-92. Agriculture has since then recovered while industrial performance has continued to be dismal. The industrial sector, which had, on an average, a growth of 8.5 per cent annually from 1989-90 to 1990-91, grew at only 1.1 per cent during the last three years. The slower growth in these two key sectors of the economy is a reflection of the demand constraint imposed on the economy and the stagnation in capital formation. Various projections have been made to estimate the employment effects of the recessionary policies that have been implemented. One set of estimates by Mundle is based on an elasticity of employment of 0.34 and an overall participation rate 42.16 per cent calculated from NSS data. Two scenarios based on high growth and low growth of GDP, which relate to assumptions about behaviour of trade balance and exchange rate, have been worked out. Unemployment by 1993-94 is projected to be 5 per cent in the high growth scenario and 6.6 per cent in the low growth scenario. This is a significant increase from the rate of 3.1 per cent in 1990-91 before the stabilisation policies were implemented. In terms of numbers, it is estimated that anywhere from 20 to 25 million will be unemployed in 1993-94. The other projection is based on census Jata. It has been found that employment growth absolutely declined by 0.12 per cent in 1991-92 and increased by 2.64 per cent in 1992-93.3 However, if the addition to the work force is considered, it is found that there is additional unemployment of about 6 million persons. It is an unavoidable conclusion, therefore, that the stabilisation policies have resulted in an increase in unemployment. To what extent this will differentially affect women is difficult to assess. The overall trend in the female work participation rate has been a matter of contention. Based on both Census and NSS data, a likely conclusion that can be drawn is that the work participation rate may have declined in the sixties and stagnated since then around this low level. During the eighties, the one bright spot in this dismal