Recognised as an outstanding piece of work in political economy, Dr Ashok Mitra’s Terms of Trade and Class Relations was originally published in London in 1977. The book has been unavailable for over twenty years. The books presents a novel analysis and a historical account of a crucial phase of India's post-Independence development. At a deeper level, the book puts forward the general proposition that social distribution of income, and hence by implication the process of economic growth, is determined by relative class strength manifested both in the economic and political domains which in turn closely interact with one another. In this new imprint in Chronicles Classics the author reflects, in his new introductory essay, on the agenda he had in mind when he wrote this work and the implications of the changes which have been seen in the Indian economic landscape since then.