Articles by K N Raj

January 11, 1975 Served in Chinese style. With warm relationships fully established, more intimate questions started coming. How many children have you? Boys, girls? Are your parents living? By the time we were through with all this I could hardly believe I was in the capital city of communist North Vietnam. There was only a picture of Ho Chi Minh hanging on the wall, benevolently smiling at us, to remind us where we were.

of "Intermediate Regimes" IN a paper published in 1964, Kalecki used the term "intermediate regimes" to describe governments in which the lower-middle class and the rich peasantry could be identified as performing the role of the ruling class.1 In the past, he observed, whenever social up- heavels brought their representatives to power they had invariably served the interests of big business often allied with the remnants of the feudal system. However, certain conditions had emerged recently in many underdeveloped countries which made it possible for them to play a different role. The specific conditions he cited were: the numerical dominance of the lower middle class at the time of achievement of the political independence of these countries, the extensive involvement of governments in economic activity, and the availability to; them of credits from socialist countries. Given these conditions, the state could, in his view, perform the role of 'dynamic entrepreneurs', undertake the basic investment necessary for economic development, and promote "a pattern of amalgamation of the interests of the lower middle class with state capitalism.

District Development and State Planning A Note K N Raj The decentralisation of governmental functions and responsibilities associated with zilla parishads, panchayat samitis and village panchayats has at best meant only partial association of local representatives with administration at these levels in certain fields and not the setting up of a machinery for plan- ning from below.

Are the questions raised by the Planning Commission in its Approach to the Fourth Plan indeed the basic policy issues that call for attention ?
Rather than ask for a vote on the basis of one or two numbers related to growth rates, it would have been better to state the policy alternatives in terms of the constraints on growth and on the diffusion of Plan benefits in the short and long run.

The all-India index numbers of the wholesale prices of food- grain are constructed on the basis of prices reported from a large number of markets spread over the country. The index numbers represent a simple average of these prices, the implicit weightage given to the prices prevailing in 'surplus' and 'deficit' areas depending therefore on the geographical distribution of the reporting markets. Since the absolute price levels for (more or less) comparable qualities of grain, as well as their movements over time, have displayed very considerable regional differences, the all-India index numbers conceal almost as much as they reveal about the behaviour of food- grain prices in the country.