8 SOCIAL SCIENTIST millenium; the time is still premature for that denouement. Rather, it i$ the vacuum created by a decrepit feudal-capitalist structure which is being sought to be filled, and in order that that structure can he thoroughly swept away. Given the organic forces at work, private investment is for ' the present unlikely to expand rapidly, whether in West Bengal or in the country as a whole. Besides, even where private investment expands, the bulk of the investible funds are supplied by the Government sector^ mostly through the public financial institutions. Either way, it is therefore important that the public sector grows and provides a general stimulus to the economy. The State government will therefore have to conven itself into a lobby for bigger and bigger devolution of financial and monetary powers to the State to enable the latter to expand its portfolio of developmental activities. It also follows from this that the public sector must function effectively and efficiently. Titi now the tradition has been that private tycoons have squeezed whatever benefits are squeezable from the public sector, thereby making the latter unprofitable, and then have turned round to lampoon it for its supposed inefficiency: they have used the public sector and, at the same time, run it down. This process the State government is determined to reverse and completely. At this juncture, then, the Left Front government in West Bengal embodies a corpus of dreams and hopes. It will be absurd to presume that the accentuating economic and industrial crisis'te the country can be resolved without a fundamental reordering of the nation's assets structure. But that is all the greater reason for this State government, given its composition and class support, to seize the initiative wherever it is seizable, and give a push to the forces of social transformation. What it can do, given the constraints ''and limitations inherent in the situation, is to demonstrate for the benefit of the toiling masses elsewhere in the country that a State government, these limitations notwithstanding, can usher in a climate of change. This is where the need arises for cultivating a sense of proportion. This experiment in the eastern part of the country cannot by ftsdf go very far unless the rest of the nation joins up. This would however depend on both the willing suspension of disbelief aftd an upsurge of faith, on the part of the toiling masses in every other nook and corner of the country. The modest adventure in West Bengal, its proponents hope, would act as a great persuader; by its example, it would captivate the imagination of the millions who constitute India's exploited majority and pulsate them into an all-compassing drive for social revolution.