2015 has not been a good year in India’s stock markets. The Sensex, for example, has declined from a high of around 29,680 in late January to a low of around 25,200 in early September. Despite evidence of fluctuations, that…
The Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust (SAHMAT) is named after a young Left-wing theatre activist who was beaten to death by goons while performing a street play in support of striking workers in Sahibabad on the outskirts of Delhi. It is…
Though restricted to a single day, the 1625-point collapse of the Sensex on 24 August 2015, which was the largest single-day decline in six years, appears to be a signal that all is not well with the Indian economy. More…
If you read or watched or listened only to the mainstream media in the North, you could be forgiven for believing that the current influx of refugees into countries of Europe is not just an important concern, but actually even…
What a difference a year makes. Even until just a year ago, the “emerging market economies” were being lauded as the hope of global capitalism. They were supposedly able to “decouple” themselves from the financial crises and stagnation of advanced…
It is hardly necessary to state how essential water is for our survival and quality of existence, for economic activity, and so on. Indeed, this has now become a policy issue of some import. It is not just that drinking…
The Chinese central bank’s decision last week to let the yuan depreciate in three stages by almost 4 percent against the U.S. dollar, was officially explained as a move towards greater market determination of its exchange rate. Though this explanation…
There is a strong view in certain Left circles, especially in certain European Left circles, that any de-linking from global capitalism conduces to a promotion of domestic reaction. Of course, even in Europe this is not necessarily the dominant view…
I don’t know about the sciences, but in the social sciences in the old days every undergraduate student in Oxford and Cambridge was required to write two essays per week which were then discussed with the tutors. It was hard…
Whatever happened to emerging markets? For a while it looked like they had secure and buoyant futures, regardless of the travails of advanced economies. Global investor interest focussed on varied countries grouped by acronyms like BRICS and MINTs that sometimes…
