SOCIAL SCIENTIST capability to survive because of the existence of parliamentary democracy. It is possible to look forward to a democratic, secular and united India in the next century with confidence. This requires, above all, an unceasing struggle to change the material conditions of the people—the key link being the democratic transformation of agrarian relations through land reforms. It is this emancipatory step which will provide the basis for overcoming sectarian, caste and religious divisiveness. Alongside, the ideological-political battle for the shaping of a new state structure which accommodates diversity through federalism and decentralization has to be carried forward. NOTES 1. Social Scientist, Vol. 10, No. 12, pp. 63-69. 2. We are not entering here the debate about the multinational character of India which requires detailed treatment. See Amalendu Guha, The Indian National Question', Economic and Political Weekly, July 31, 1982, and Javeed Alam, 'Dialectics of Capitalist Transformation and National Crystallization', Economic and Political Weekly, January 1983. 3. Aijaz Ahmad has put this succinctly:'... the new national bourgeoisies, like globalized capital itself, want a weak nation-state in relation to capital and a strong one in relation to labour'. 'Globalization and the Nation-State' Seminar, January 1996. 4. E.M.S. Namboodiripad, op.cit. p. 68.