SOCIAL SCIENTIST 179 opposition to the current strategy is immediately branded as emanating from leftist dogma. In reality if there is any dogma, it lies in the IMF prescriptions themselves. For country after country, the same package is offered as a panacea for all evils, in complete disregard to the actual situation of the countries, as well as to the experience of the reform package itself. In the euphoric projections that accompany the programme, it is often forgotten that even the professed aims of the package are not achieved, not to mention the omissions that the IMF itself acknowledges. The latest example of this is, of course, Mexico, that was until very recently the example of the outshining success of the package, as a country that was slowly but surely getting out of the debt crisis by faithful adherence to monetarism, IMF-style. The current Mexican crisis puts a question mark not only on the feasibility of the package in that country, but in the other Third World countries as well. The monograph would have been a great deal richer had it focused briefly on this debate and also on actual stabilisation experience in other Third World countries. Also, one gets a feeling that the actual discussion of the Indian reforms package is relatively terse and not as sharply focused as the earlier part of the monograph. Many of the components of the reforms are stated without comment, whereas the entire package has been tried in a sufficient number of countries, for certain generalisations to be drawn about its effects. For instance, success of the programme in reducing the fiscal deficit and controlling the rate of inflation is mentioned. Here again the extent of even partial 'success* on these fronts has been questioned. Regarding inflation, while the author correctly points out that it is only the rate of inflation that has come down (in other words, prices are still rising, but only at a lower rate), what needs to be also mentioned is that the overall rate of inflation masks the differential impact of inflation on different groups in the economy and also hides the steep rise in the prices of essential commodities that has taken place. Just a casual look at the figures will confirm this. In 1992-93, while the wholesale price index was 13.8 per cent, the consumer price index for agricultural labour was 22.6 per cent. Pulses were rising at 31.7 per cent, vegetables were up by 19.5 per cent potatoes by 31 per cent, onions by 96.4 per cent, groundnut oil by 21.2 per cent and mustard and rapeseed oil by 17.4 per cent, to mention just a few essential commodities for all Indians. (Figures from Economic Survey, 1993-94). In the discussion on the balance of payments front, the monograph does well by pointing out that where the BOP situation is chronic and it can be predicted that imports wHI continue to grow and surge ahead of exports, there is an objective limit to liberalisation and globalisation, and that limit is exports themselves. This has to be