Articles by R S Morkhandikar

reform. But there are three types of questions which will bother the reader of the book: First, the political feasibility of peasant-oriented land reform; second, the need for considering the growing contradictions of the agrarian sector not only in relation to dualistic agriculture, but also in relation to the nature of integration of the agrarian sector with the non-agricultural sec- tor; and, third, the growing gap between the value-systems underlying a humane and just society and those which are influencing the behaviour of the elite class both in rural and urban society. On the first, notwithstanding the growing unrest in some areas, the political feasibility of radical land reform appears to be uncertain within a gradualistic frame. Further, the farmers' lobby is much more powerful now than during the Nehru regime. Moreover, the industrial bourgeoisie, who had a stake in anti-feudal land reform earlier, is not now inclined to support a radical land reform.

Muddled View from the Top R S Morkhandikar Changing India by Sankar Ghose; Allied Publishers, Bombay, 1978; pp 290, Rs60.
WHEN a politician with some claims to scholarship, especially one who occupied ministerial positions during the critical years of 1972-77, writes a book on India's changing political and economic scene, one hopes to gain some insight into the decision-making process in the country, or at least to read an analysis of the political and economic crises that the country went through. Any one who takes up Sankar Ghose's "Changing India" with some such expectation is bound to be disappointed. She book is old matter in a new jacket. Three-fourth of the book contains material taken from the author's three other books published earlier.1 Whole paragraphs, with a few sentences dropped or added, from these books have been incorporated under new chapter titles. Since the book does not carry a preface or an introduction, one is at a loss to Understand what prompted the author to compile this book when he had so little new to say. A few paragraphs about the policies of the Janata government have been added wherever necessary.