The loan plan has been front-page news for several days, and the political opposition has responded with confusion. Essentially, parties on the right and left have expressed anxiety about India's perilous economic condition, but ask if there are other options besides going to an international agency that would attach firm strings to a huge loan. The Government says there are not.

Officials said that it would be the biggest loan the I.M.F. has ever made to India, and that it would hinge on a set of conditions demanding that India reduce its budget deficit, open its markets to foreign competition, diminish its maze of licensing requirements, cut subsidies, and liberalize investment. India, which still views itself as a socialist nonaligned leader, views the potential arrangement with pain, even embarrassment.

"We are very uneasy about conditions imposed on us," said Ashis Nandy, a political scientist at the Center for the Study of Developing Societies in New Delhi. "This will be seen as a kind of interference with India's autonomy." 'Most Serious Economic Crisis'

T. N. Ninan, editor of the Economic Times, an influential daily, said: "This is the most serious economic crisis we have faced. We have never had this kind of debt problem. The Government fiscal position has never been as bad as it is today. There will be some demurring from critics about a loan. There'll be some opposition. The left will oppose this arrangement. But most of us know that the alternative will be much worse than accepting an I.M.F. loan."

The economic crisis came about because of an overlap of political and economic problems, including India's revolving-door Governments in the last two years, with four Prime Ministers and four finance ministers, which led to virtual economic paralysis. Other factors included the absence of a coherent budget in recent years, a spiraling deficit, rising inflation and India's panicky purchase of oil at $30 a barrel, about $10 higher than today's price, during the Persian Gulf war.