IMPERIALISM AND THE DIFFUSION OF DEVELOPMENT 17 rate policy of the country which in turn profoundly affect the entire macroeconomics of an economy, this amounts in effect to taking economic policy entirely out of the purview of the elected government of the country. And this is sought to be achieved through legislation passed by the parliament itself! But that is not enough. To make things further safe, there are proposals for a fixed term for the legislature, for Ayub Khan-style "basic democracy" and for a Presidential form of government. And a committee of persons handpicked by the government, which enjoys no legal or moral standing whatsoever, is working towards rewriting the Constitution of the country! I now come to the second effect, namely the fracturing of the unity of the nation forged in the course of the anti-imperialist struggle. This too is happening in our own country before our very eyes. The most obvious instrument of it in our case is Hindu communal-fascism which seeks to substitute a Hindu Rashtra for the nation-state that emerged out of the anti-imperialist struggle. By detaching the concept of the nation from the context of the anti-imperialist struggle, by pitting one section of the people against another in the name of religion, by contributing threfore to the emergence of rival communal-fascist movements, it serves, notwithstanding all its talk of "swadeshi", to weaken the anti-imperialist consciousness7, and to subvert the anti-imperialist struggle, even as its government carries out with ruthless determination, at the behest of international finance capital, the process of annexation of the economy by such capital. Communal-fascism in short plays the role of ushering in the hegemony of international finance capital over the domestic economy. Communal-fascism however is only one of the ways of the fracturing of the nation. There are a variety of other ways, at least one of which deserves attention here. And this has to do with secessionism. Accentuated fiscal crisis of the central government in a federal polity inevitably gets "passed downwards", making the centre starve the states of funds. The latter therefore increasingly look outside the country, in fact to international finance capital, for a bail-out from the crisis, which encourages secessionism, promotes a break-up of the federation into smaller autonomous units, and, in the process lets loose fascisms of another kind, based on ethnic groups. The example of the erstwhile Yugoslavia comes readily to mind. The portents in our case too appear ominous: indeed one of the "discussion papers" released by the Constitution Review Committee reportedly talks of giving Treaty-making powers to state governments.