Articles by B M

NEW DELHI Structural Changes Ruled Out B M THE special meeting of the Consultative Committee of MPs on Planning last week to discuss a private member, Vasanth Satbe's note on 'structural' changes in the economy was a novel happening. The Planning Commission, it was suggested, had felt that a "wider national debate" on the pros and cons of the suggestions made by Sathe would be useful, even though it found many of Sathe's propositions unacceptable or infeasible. What this exercise, in fact, indicated was the utter apathy that pervades Yojana Bhavan these days. The planners are willing to reduce themselves to the position of a debating society while major issues of economic policy and management of the economy are settled elsewhere.

October 25, 1975 The SP is dearly opposed to this process. It has in its post-electoral phase moved sharply to the Right and Soares represents the hopes and aspirations of the ruling social-democratic parties of capitalist Europe. The PCP after flirting in a sectarian way with put- chism has changed course once again and has now a seat in the Sixth Government (a government of law and order) which is dominated by SP ministers while at the same time keeping a foot in the revolutionary camp. It vaccilates between class-struggle and class-collaborationist forties. The immediate next step is for revolutionaries to win over a bulk of the workers at the base of the SP and thus isolate the leadership. In other words what is needed is an audaeous struggle for a workers' united front, it is here that the sectarian course of the PCP during the summer period or rather the period of summer madnesses has been totally counter-productive. It has driven SP workers firmly behind Soares. However there is still time to reverse the process- Portugal today is a laboratory of socialist revolution. There are a whole number of groups to the left of the PCP. The most significant non-Maoist groups have formed a Revolutionary United Front which has mobilised hundreds of thousands of workers and soldiers throughout the country. It is these groups which will ensure that there is not a repetition of Chile in Portugal. The main groups in the RUF are the LCI (Internationalist Communist League

NEW DELHI Token Start on Rural Banks B M LAST WEEK a series of ordinances were promulgated. Of the three ordinances, one made a cut in the bonus entitlement of workers, one paid homage to the International Women's Year by laying down that women would enjoy equal pay with men in employment and the third sanctioned the setting up of five rural banks as part of the pro. gramme to relieve the burden of indebtedness on the rural poor. It was further announced that another ordinance was in the offing, which would ban unjustified closures and lay-offs. The impact of the ordinance on bonuses will be immediate and direct on the workers, and the trade unions are going to face a difficult and complex situation. The influence, of the other measures is bound to be comparatively slow and moderate; nevertheless the setting up of the new rural banks calls for fuller and more careful attention.

NEW DELHI New Areas for Private Sector B M EVER since he assumed office as Industry and Civil Supplies Minister, T A Pai has been displaying much zeal in his drive to end the prolonged stagnation in industrial production. He is very optimistic, too, about what he can achieve, and he has publicly committed himself to an increase of 8 per cent or more in industrial production this year.

Problems of Implementation B M NEW DELHI has witnessed a series of high level conferences since the announcement of the 20-point pro- gramme of new economic measures. These conferences have been devoted to different items of the programme and how to implement them on a crash basis. The Prime Minister herself has participated in many of these conferences and has delivered the key-note speeches. It has been claimed that, as a result, a new direction has been given to economic policy and management and that the results are already showing