Managing the reform effort is much more challenging than making the effort itself. Indeed, it is on the quality of reform management that the fulfillment of the various goals set by policymakers depends. The book has been split into three parts: Corporate Planning. Management of Intellectual Property Rights, and the Macro and Micro Issues of Liberalisation. On the face of it, these are unrelated, but if we look at these closely we would find a strong link emerging, IPRs have implications that go well beyond an economy's trade performance. The manner in which the diverse players in an economy handle IPRs largely influences their performance, particularly in an increasingly open economy. Managing the free trade-oriented IPRs regime should become a major corporate responsibility well before the WTO deadline to developing countries to fall in line with the ground rules of global free transfer of goods as well as services. It is this, which prompted addressing major aspects of corporate planning in the first part of the book. The concluding part focuses on the cataclysmic changes that have taken place since mid-1991 when the Narasimha Rao Government bound the Indian nation and the economy to a process of liberalization covering all areas of the regime hitherto tied to all manner of controls and regulations. It is to be hoped that the second generation reform will be characterised by earnestness on the part of the corporate sector towards giving an impetus to achievement of its goals.

As of now, India incorporated is characterised by a Missing Link, an euphemism for a want of urgency among forces, precisely those that should spearhead the drive to give the Indian economy the spirit of a true corporate. There are no doubt titans in politics, administration, industry and business. But, there are pygmies galore everywhere. Some major policy decisions have been taken but these are swept aside by measures of populism driven by the political urge to survive whatever the cost to the economy. With impending elections to certain critical legislative assemblies, the leadership duly recognizes the wisdom of soft options anywhere and everywhere. Sugarcane growers in Uttar Pradesh have to be appeased at the cost of sugar mills-this has been the strategy all these years, but now the cane price has been fixed at a level that is tantamount to killing the hen that was laying the egg. The mills never could yield a golden egg but the egg was an economic reality-farmers could grow cane season after season thanks to the sugar industry, the large arrears of cane payments notwithstanding. The infliction of a preposterous cane price on the mills will make a mockery of industrial pricing and in the wider context push the economy farther-not nearer-from the Goal of India Incorporated. There has to be a strong and sustained process of desubsidisation, whether it is of the final product or the input/raw material. State patronage must cease to be an aspect of national policy and vote banks wherever they are must be wooed on the basis of exemplary performance primarily in the form of governance, and not through incentives give-aways, or largesse. Politics must play its part essentially in promoting social justice and economic efficiency. To the extent that these are conflicting ends governance really has to be exceptional.

In agriculture, the dictates of vote bank policies have reduced to a mockery the whole lot of catalysts. In the farm economy, the various agencies entrusted with the role of catalysts were also required to regulate, police and carry out corrections. Those who provided credit, for instance, necessarily had to check whether the money lent was productively utilized and also see to it that credit was so deployed as to facilitate easy recovery. The not so starting findings of the Sivaraman Committee nearly two decades ago had made it explicit that the prescribed catalysts simply poured more and more good money after bad. The quality of rural credit has not changed for the better in the intervening period, which is not saying much for the efficiency level of farmers as much as that of the various institutions associated with rural development. Clearly, an effort has to be made to phase out vote bank policies and to delink electoral compulsions from matters of rural development. Without this, it is going to be extremely difficult to subject farming to the basic commercial norms of management. Sooner than later, irrigation facilities, electricity and diesel should be made available to farmers only at cost-plus prices. Various farm produce, however, should be offered for sale on consumer-friendly terms. This would demand a high level of farm efficiency, especially when the State ceases to be the assured buyer in respect of foodgrains and the industrial users of cash crops are freed from the longstanding rigours of discretionary and grower-friendly price fixation as in the case of cotton, sugarcane, oilseeds and natural rubber. As long as politics determines the farm economics, agriculture will remain populist driven and competitive growing of various crops will remain a pipe dream. Corporates, if they are really professional and mean to run the farms on a truly cost and quality competitive basis, should refuse to draw on the natural benefits of vote bank politics. They must be prepared to pay a commercial return to those supplying the various inputs. By doing so, they must put pressure on the suppliers (which, effectively, are propped up by the Government) to leave the populism of the present in favour of the commercial demands of the emerging future.

The present work is a study of media influence on women vis-à-vis their own development. The influence of media on rural women with regard to certain issues is quite perplexing to a commoner, but a challenge for the researcher to interpret. In a few selected areas of developmental impact, not much difference exists between the rural and the urban women. This work identifies an insight into media content priorities, developmental preferences of women and also their access to media. Unless women participate on a larger scale in media production and consumption, their right to policy formulation and decision making will remain a distant dream in a fast changing world. If technologies and information societies are only male controlled, the proposal of an impending knowledge revolution will remain ill-prepared and non-executable for half of global population is women. In such a scenario, studies like this are of more relevance and utility.