Recently Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge quipped that the ‘U’ in UPS (Unified Pension Scheme) stands for U-Turn. While that may be seen as stretching interpretative liberty, he was touching a raw nerve. Whether it be lateral entry into the civil…
A Good deal of analysis of the recent political upheaval in Bangladesh has focussed on the high-handedness and authoritarianism of Sheikh Hasina’s government; it has either missed altogether, or generally underplayed, the change that has occurred in the economic situation…
The latest controversy in the South Asian University, over an interview with a philosopher mentioned in a student’s research proposal that resulted in severe backlash and eventual resignation of an eminent foreign professor, would appear to be ludicrous if it…
India’s quasi-federal democracy, which was in danger of collapsing into a centralised authoritarianism, seems to be holding up. The results of the 2024 Lok Sabha election that reduced the brute majority of the National Democratic Alliance fronted by the BJP,…
The popular insurrection that ousted Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her Awami League government offers important lessons for the international community and neighboring India. While the unrest was undoubtedly fueled by the regime’s repressive and increasingly anti-democratic tactics, exemplified…
With the short-term, frenzied interest that accompanies annual budget presentations in India having ended, it is time to raise issues that were largely ignored in the debate. Prime among them is the question as to how much or how little…
In the search for the next country that would transit from backward to advanced nation status, India’s name sometimes features. This is partly because the idea has been mooted by Prime Minister Narender Modi, who promises to make India a…
In his opus The Wealth of Nations published in 1776 Adam Smith drew a distinction between the progressive state, the stationary state and the declining state. The progressive state was one where capital accumulation would be occurring at a rate…
The coming to power of governments led by fascists is either a reality or a threat today over large parts of the world. In Europe at present there are several countries where fascists are leading governments; France was on the…
For the French elections which Emmanuel Macron has called in the wake of the impressive showing by the Far-Right in the European parliamentary polls, four parties on the Left, the Communists, the Socialists, the Greens, and France Unbowed (of Jean-Luc…
