54 SOCIAL SCIENTIST 5 The basic facts about the patterns of work participation of women in India and other aspects of their position have been summarized in numerous places by now and are well known: see among other sources the Status of Women Commission Report". For a broad international comparison Esther Boserup's Women9 s Role in Economic Development is still the most comprehensive and useful. For the case of China see, among others, the Women^s Special Issue of the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, January-March 1975. 6 On Vietnam see especially Arlene Bergman, Women m Vietnam, San Francisco 1975, and Mai Thi Tu, Vietnamese Women: Tester day and Today, Association of Vietnamese Students in Canada, 1973. On China, see the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, op. cit., and Marilyn Young, (Ed), Women in China, University of Michigan 1972. 7 To take secondary contradictions (women's oppression, and caste oppression) as primary would be a ^right^ deviation; to ignore secondary contradictions altogether and treat class as the only contradiction has been called a "liquidationist" or "left deviationist^' tendency. 8 Quotes are from interviews except where otherwise indicated. 9 For a comprehensive statistical overview see V Subramaniam, Parched Earth, The Maharashtra D sought 1970-73, Government of Maharashtra, 1975. ^ 7W.,p40\ 11 Grown Shramik, 1 December 1971 (Belwandi session special issue) and 15 February 1973. 12 Subramaniam, op. cit., p 411, 18 New Age, 3 June 1973; Peoples' Democracy, 27 May 1973. Lal Nishan and CPI (M) sources agree on the 1^ million figure: CPI cites 3 million but this is undoubtedly an overestimation. 14 Subramaniam, op. cit. pp 433, 469. 15 7W.,p404. 16 See New Age, People's Democracy and Gramin Shramilk for this period. More interestingly, after June, while CPI (M) tended to project an extension of the demand for "food and work" on an all-India scale (People's Democracy, 27 May 1973) the CPI shifted to a "dehoarding" campaign, which was not felt by government to be so much of a threat since its immediate targets were the merchants rather than the administration; See Subramaniam, op.cit., p. 318. 17 For the first time the basic issue of women's liberation was coming into prominence— abolition of the sexual division of labour by which women were limited to "home and children" while men held a monopoly on productive labour.