The WTO has been a major weapon used by the advanced countries to roll back the structures that the third world dirigiste regimes which came into existence after decolonization had erected for achieving a degree of self-reliance. The TRIPS agreement…
The central government sets up a Pay Commission about once every ten years to recommend what the structure of salaries, allowances and pensions for its current and retired employees should be. The seventh Pay Commission had been set up accordingly…
The remarkable and resounding victory of the Grand Alliance in the recent assembly elections in Bihar may well mark a turning point in Indian politics, after such a comprehensive rejection by the state’s electorate of the politics of hate and…
The closest friend I had in my childhood was a boy who came from a dalit family. He lived in a little bustee near our house in the small mofussil town in Odisha where I spent my early years. He…
The award of the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for 2015 to Angus Deaton, has once again revived discussion on the nature and purpose of the ‘Economics Nobel’. According to the Royal Swedish Academy…
It was just over a year ago, on Gandhi Jayanti 2014, that the schoolgirls of the Senior Secondary School of the town of Bhim, Rajasthan, went on strike. The young, fresh-faced and neatly groomed girls were far removed from anyone’s…
Now that the UK is set to stop its foreign aid to India at the end of this year, it is worth considering what message this sends not just to India but to the wider world. It can be justified as…
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…
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…
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…
