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Elections in the US & India in 1990 showed that the issue of "reservations" or "quotas" is a bitterly divisive moral & political issue in both nations. Although there are significant parallels, social scientists in the US have paid little attention to the Indian experience. Some of the consequences of policies of compensatory discrimination based on membership in a historically disadvantaged group defined by the rule of descent were predicted by Mohandas K. Gandhi. Beginning in the 1920s he fought proposals by the British & by B. R. Ambedkar, a leader of the Untouchables, to treat the latter as separate from other Hindus, & therefore entitled to special treatment. Gandhi predicted that if they were given separate electorates, the Untouchables would remain Untouchables for ever. The Indian constitution adopted in 1950 prohibited discrimination based on caste, but guaranteed reservations of seats in parliament, government jobs, & places in institutions of higher education for "ex-Untouchables." Gandhi's prediction has proven valid. Descendants of Untouchables now claim preferential treatment, & many jatis have petitioned to be classified as Untouchable in order to benefit from reservations. As has been true in the US, critics of compensatory discrimination charge that it has been an advantage for only a small segment of the intended beneficiaries. In both nations, surveys show that the extent of reverse discrimination & the gains therefrom have been exaggerated. Critics in both societies charge that compensatory treatment tends to make dependents of the beneficiaries, discouraging organization & action on their own behalf. Preferential treatment of affirmative action in the US has developed primarily through administrative policies & judicial decisions without majority support in the Congress or in the electorate. In the 1870s a disillusioned Frederick Douglass warned that the liberty of blacks would never be secure as long as it depended on the good will of the majority. He described the Supreme Court as the most autocratic point in the government. With the issue of reverse discrimination contributing materially to twelve years of a conservative Republican presidency, & with the consequent appointment of a succession of conservative Supreme Court justices, it appears that Douglass's prediction, like Gandhi's is being borne out. The reservation of a bloc of parliamentary seats for the depressed classes is a strong factor in perpetuating the Indian system despite strong opposition. In contrast, the policy of compensatory discrimination in the US may contain the seeds of its own destruction. Modified AA

Political and military situation during 1989.

Although the imperatives of external debt service have led to a reduction in the size of defence budgets in most Third World countries, the impact of military spending cannot be understood separately from the political attractiveness of external borrowing in the 1970s. Generally, the four major Southeast Asian borrowers - Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand - did not use foreign capital to finance their budget deficits, but appear to have invested some borrowed funds in domestic defence industries. (DÜI-Sen)

In 1989, the governing structures of the People's Republic of Kampuchea (PRK), which re-christened itself the State of Cambodia (SOC) in mid-year, undertook modest organizational changes and ministerial-level personnel shifts during the year, and put into place the legislative paraphenalia required to run an economic reform campaign. The author discusses domestic politics, the life of the People's Revolutionary Party of Kampuchea (PRPK), the armed forces of the SOC, the Khmer Rouge faction, the continuation of the guerilla war and peace negotiations to solve the Cambodia conflict. (DÜI-Sen)

Vietnam's economic reform programme, in full swing by the mid-1980s, gained its initial momentum from the September 1979 benchmark plenum of the Vietnamese Communist Party (VNCP) Central Committee and the 1980 efforts to implement the late 1979 reforms. The Sixth National Congress of VNCP was held in December 1986. The paper reviews the record of economic reforms in Vietnam from the late 1970s to the period of the Sixth Party Congress and discusses the current reformist efforts directed at remaking the economy. The paper also explores the 1987 record of the nearly decade-long parallel effort to salvage the institution of the Party. (DÜI-Sen)