No budget in post-independence India had been as openly cynical about the lives of the vast masses of the working people as the one presented on February 1, 2025. All pundits, from the finance minister downwards, agree that the strategy…
Implicit in the Budget is the hope that tax concessions will result in spending and also reviving GDP growth, and ‘incentivising’ the corporate sector will revive private investment The background to Budget 2025-26, as presented even by the official Economic…
Well-known Marxist scholar, the late Amalendu Guha, had argued persuasively that in modern India there co-existed in the minds of the people a dual national consciousness: a local, regional-linguistic nationality consciousness, of being a Bengali, or a Tamil, or a…
A CHORUS of “establishment” voices, from consultancy firms to the financial press, has been demanding a boost to domestic consumption as a means of reviving the flagging growth rate of the Indian economy. The latest to join this chorus is…
The sense in business circles, that demand is weak and growth is slowing down, was confirmed when GDP figures for the second quarter (July-September) of financial year 2024-25 showed growth at 5.4 per cent. This was well below forecasts of…
Trump’s victory in the US Presidential election conforms to a pattern presently observable across the world, namely a collapse of the liberal centre and a growth in support either for the Left, or for the extreme Right, the neo-fascists, in…
The Kazan summit of the BRICS countries was a historic one for several reasons: first, it created a new category called “partner nations” as a step towards full membership, and accepted 13 such new “partner” countries, among whom were Cuba…
The financial media in India and abroad are flagging the likelihood of a meltdown in India’s financial sector, resulting from large scale defaults on personal loans. Even the Financial Times of London has chosen to devote considerable column space to an article…
During the entire post-war period when it has been in existence in the metropolitan countries, democracy has never been in as bizarre a state as it is today. Democracy is supposed to mean the pursuit of policies that are in…
During Modi’s visit to Ukraine (why he visited Ukraine at all at the present time remains a mystery), Zelensky asked India not to purchase fuel from Russia in violation of western sanctions, that is, to fall in line with the…
