Globalization was advertised as being beneficial for all, as constituting a bold step towards universal economic betterment. This was clearly wrong; and it was not just Left economists, but even “mainstream” economists like Paul Samuelson who had said so at…
Britain has voted to leave the European Union (EU). And the managers of global capitalism have their hands full addressing the fall-out of ‘Brexit’, even as their efforts to manage the after-shocks of the crisis of 2008 remain unsuccessful. It…
Two years ago, when Narendra Modi led the BJP to a huge victory in the general elections, there was little doubt that the youth of India, and especially those in the Hindi heartland, had played a significant role in this…
Now that we had had two years of the Modi government, it is only natural to look back at what has changed. So we are being treated to numerous assessments of the performance thus far, which obviously vary according to…
The term “involution” – which means to turn into oneself, or to shrink, or to reverse a process of evolving – may seem like a strange one to apply to societies. Yet that is the term that increasingly comes to…
Before the last general elections, two supposedly contrasting images of Narendra Modi were projected by the media: Modi, as the development man and Modi, as the Hindutva crusader. It was argued that he won the elections because of his development…
There was a time when India had one of the finest statistical systems in the developing world. No matter how one interpreted the statistics that came out of that system, one could take the figures themselves as reasonably correct. This…
There’s been a lot of talk among policy makers in India about ensuring inclusion. The UPA government talked about “inclusive growth” and made it the headline for its Five Year Plan documents. The NDA government has dispensed with planning but…
As the air in India grows thick with accusations of being “anti-national”, it is worth taking a step back to consider what this means in political economy terms. After all, to characterise someone as “anti-national” you must first define what…
Unemployment has become so persistent a phenomenon in contemporary times that there is a common feeling that it is a “natural” state of affairs, that nothing can ever be done about it, and that the only way to have greater…
