62 SOCIAL SCIENTIST appears to have been set on discovering the 'middle path5—the futile attempt to reconcile irreconcilables. Coming to M.S Trak's own approach, one gathers the impression that she is of the opinion that through some process of "diffusion" as between traditional Western concepts of development and" "indigenous values", a more satisfactory development model could be evolved. This I feel to be the crux of the matter. "Indigenous values" are neither ahistorical nor non-clajss. They are a set of value systems engendered by a specific class rule. What does "subordination to indigenous values" mean? It is not like preserving artifacts surely, for value systems are living social phenomena; it means the perpetuation of the rule of the same classes. The experience of the countries of the Middle East are substantial testimony to what the marriage of Western models of development with "idigenous values" really means; or one can turn to Pakistan or Bangladesh; or for that matter to the Hindu chauvinists in India. In that sense Agaoglu quite correctly grasped part of the problem as lying in the reactionary nature of the state and the classes that it represented. In her rejoinder, Ms Trak argues that the recent experience of "a large number of underdeveloped conutries" strengthens her criticism of Agaoglu on the ground that democracy is not quite compatible with capitalist development in a backward country. If she has any delusions of alternative indigenous political institutions, she might well refer to the monumental sham of 'panchyat raj" and 'Gandhian ^P1'0?01'^) trusteeship5 in India, If she see& a solution in modified democracy, she will have to keep company with the authoritarian rulers of Third World countries, too numerous to list. For a backward country—mostly ex-colonial—which chooses to take the capitalist path of development, a substantive state intervention in the economic process does provide a path, albeit limited, of development while retaining a measure of independence in status and initiative. The alternative is to slip into the position of -a neo-colony and be run out of the US Department ot State and the board rooms of multinational corporations. In both situations, the state 'constantly seeks to curtail whatever democratic rights obtain. It is not that democracy is incompatible with the capitalist path of development in the contemporary period, ^>ut vice versa. The non-relevance ofRostow et al lies not in their non-cognizance of the specific political and cultural features of the underdeveloped world, but in the fact that while, on the one hand, they are the apologists of the expansion of international monopoly capital, on the other hand, through their deliberate glossing over of political institations, they visualize the perpetuation of the existing class rule whose backward elements fit into the schema of ne6-colonial development, as collaborators and pliant clients of Imperialism. Hence^ the need for an overview. S C