86 SOCIAL SCIENTIST
being an equally useful political document in countries like Bangladesh or India. To those who are facing exploitation every day of their lives a more realistic and rigorous picture will have to be presented. The same point comes out in the context of the aid provided by the International Bank for Rehabilitation and Development (World Bank), and its rural development projects. Lifschultz and Bird1 draw upon the work of Betsy Hartmann and James Boyce but they lay bare the supporting role of the World Bank in exploitation.
The analysis given in the book is reasonably straight-forward in that the linkage between the ownership and control of resources in agriculture and the poverty of the majority is clearly shown. In this general sense there is little difference in the forces of exploitation in industry or agriculture. At the same time it would be incorrect to say as Hartmann and Boyce do (page 39) that the key for a suitable reconstruction of society is land reform. Land reform is the slogan of many bourgeois political groups in the Third World countries and is not necessarily a revolutionary demand. It is, therefore, necessary to distinguish between the land reforms that will benefit only an emerging exploitative group in the existing social order and land reforms that transform agrarian relations and suport long-term economic development and social justice. Such agrarian relationships, that could support revolutionary long-term objectives are necessarily linked with revolutionary movements and capture of political power by the exploited and oppressed class. While Hartmann and Boyce are very clear on this question the book as it stands gives the impression that land reform is necessarily revolutionary, when it is not.
VINOD VYASULU
1 Lifschultz and Bird, ^Bangladesh: Anatomy of a Coup*', Economic and Political Weekly, December 8 and 15, 1979.