A Bull in a China Shop
The BJP government, like a bull in a China shop, is wrecking the economy. A neo-liberal regime, even at the best of times, i.e. even when the economy is booming, brings misery to the vast mass of the working people…
Agrarian Conditions and Recent Peasant Struggles in Sikar
Sikar, situated in Shekhawati region of Rajasthan, has a glorious history of peasant struggles. From 1920s through 1960s, peasants of Sikar fought successfully against the jagirdars. Sikar had an extremely oppressive jagirdari regime under the Raja of Sikar and peasants…
The Epidemic of Vigilantism
My wife and I retired seven years ago after teaching in Jawaharlal Nehru University for nearly four decades, and neither of us gets a pension.The interest on our joint lifetime savings largely sustains us. This entire amount had to be…
America’s Turn Towards Fascism and Its Contradictions
The fact that fascist elements in the U.S. have started raising their sinister head and that Donald Trump has started showing his open sympathy for such elements is borne out by several recent incidents. On Saturday August 12, at a…
The Truth About Demonetization
After months of dilly-dallying the Reserve Bank of India has finally come out with the figure that nearly 99 percent of the currency notes demonetized in November 2016, came back to the banking system. The total value of demonetized currency,…
A Dangerous Analogy
Narendra Modi’s attempt to imitate Jawaharlal Nehru by giving a mid-night speech on July 1 at the Central Hall of parliament, while inaugurating the Goods and Services Tax, could perhaps be passed off as a merely laughable idiosyncrasy. His equating,…
Economy Plunging Headlong into Recession
Volume II of the Economic Survey which was brought out by the Ministry of Finance a few days ago paints an extremely grim picture of the Indian economy. The growth rate of real Gross Value Added (GVA which is the…
Financing Education
The Draft National Education Policy unveiled by the central government puts forward a bizarre line of reasoning. Education, it is argued on the basis of a long-held and honourable belief going back to the Kothari Commission, should have an annual…
Twenty Years after The Asian Financial Crisis
Exactly twenty years ago, a major financial crisis had hit the countries of East and South East Asia in July 1997. This crisis was a watershed in the history of third world development, in the sense that these “tiger economies”…
Three Deaths
When one reaches a certain age, one has to steel oneself to the idea of hearing periodically the news of one’s friends passing away. But when the passing of several friends gets concentrated within a very short span of time,…