Market Forces D Sanjaya Baru San jay a Baru (born 1954) completed his doctoral studies in economics from Jawaharlal Nehru University working on the problem Sugar Policy in India. His book, The Political Economy of Indian Sugar: State Intervention and Structural Change (OUP, Delhi), is in press. He has taught in Osmania University and in Jawaharlal Nehru University. From 1986 he is Associate Professor in the Department of Economics, University of Hyderabad, undertaking occasional teaching, research and seminar commitments in England, Italy, Mali, etc. He has contributed chapters in books such as D.N. Panigrahi (ed.). Economy, Society and Politics in Modern India, 1900-1950 (Vikas, Delhi, 1985); G. Parthasarathy et al (ed.), Peasant Farming and Growth of Capitalism in Indian Agriculture (Vis-alandhra, 1984)! RM. Crunden et al (ed.), New Perspectives on America and South Asia (Chanakya, New Delhi, 1985). His articles appear regularly in Economic and Political Weekly and Social Scientist to which he is a contributing editor. He is a consultant on Indian economic issues for Oxford Analytica Daily Bulletin, Oxford. Sanjaya Baru is at present researching the emergence of new entrepreneurial groups in Indian industry and the impact of the liberalization of economic policy in India on the structure of domestic industry and trade. He is also wideninghisarea ofenauiry to look at the processes of industrial growth and technological change in developing economies as a whole; he is investigating in particular the impact on developing economies of the unification of the West European market in 1992. In the context of the seminar on contemporary cultural critiaue, it is Sanjaya Barn's interest in issues pertaining to ideology and, more specifically, his interest in the mechanics of state intervention in India and the instruments of policy that a coalition of dominant classes uses to maintain its political and economic hesemonv, that is of immediate relevance. I think many of the points I wanted to lay before you have already come up in some form in the preceding discussion. This is the first time I am interacting with a group of people who are from the world of culture, and many of the issues that concern you are in a sense new to me. Secondly, I^will only be raising certain questions which may help in situating our concerns here, because as I see it there are two kinds of questions we are dealing with as we meet here — one, questions of form, the other, questions of content. Questions relating to form are part of a universal debate. But since the seminar is focussing on a critique of contemporary culture, I think questions relating to content are perhaps of greater political relevance. In any case I feel entirely incompetent to discuss formal issues. I shall start with a comment made by Ashish, when he said that the crisis was one of unfulfilled promises by the state. I have, as an economist, been interested in understanding the nature of our economic crisis, and often the first and biggest hurdle is in saying that it