112 SOCIAL SCIENTIST (<. . . the practically unknown intermediate multinational firms. . /> (p 141). The usefulness of the book would have been greater had the data base been more sound. On occasions, the limited amount of hard evidence is stretched, and Feder allows himself a good deal of discretion in extrapolation and inference. Further, the description tends to get emotive at points, and an exaggerated emphasis is placed on the nefarious practices of the MNCs. The point needs to be forcefully made that even in the absence of such practices, the consequences for Mexican workers and peasants would not be very different. But these are minor points. Feder has convincingly rebutted the conventional arguments in favour of inviting MNCs into LDGs on the spurious claim that they provide foreign exchange, employment and modern technology. The book is especially relevant in the present Indian context, where public sector enterprises are busy entering into highly dubious deals with MNCs.7 V B ATHREYA 1 See any standard text book on economic development. 2 See, among others, A G Frank, Capitalism and Under-development ni Latin America^ New York, 1969; G Arrighi andj S Saul, Essays in the Political Economy of Southern Africa, New York, 1971; C K Wilber (ed). The Political Economy of Development and Unde>-development, New York, 1972. 3 The regions are Zamora and Irapuato. 4 The figures have been calculated from Table IV on page 29 ofFeder's book. 5 Among the list of machinery suppliers are General Electric, Westinghouse, Cutler and Hammer, and some Japanese and other multinationals. 6 Feder (pp 108-115) describes briefly a ^ini-revolt' by peasant-growers against the conditions facing them. The revolt appears to have been sparked off by a sharp rise in the water fees from 10 pesos to 400 pesos. In the ensuing struggle the list of demands was expanded to include rigorous execution of land reforms, better wages for field and farm workers, higher prices for stawberry producers, and so on. But the struggle petered out after the leader and some activists were arrested. 7 See for instance, P Ramamurthi. Stop BHEL's Dangerous Tinck wifh Siemens, a GITU publication 1978.