PRAGOTI

The role of future trading in commodity markets has often been a subject of controversies in India, between those who look at future markets as a guiding force for price discovery, risk sharing and market efficiency and others who contest such claims, maintaining that future trade has been responsible for speculation-led price increases, especially as at present. Prof. Sunanda Sen, formerly senior professor at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning (CESP), Jawaharlal Nehru University, writes.  

On the 29 November 2009, Switzerland in a very controversial referendum banned the construction of Minarets. This came as surprise for many who considered Europe as a better place to live and more secular in its societal construction. The continent, which suffered huge loss of both property, and life in two World Wars, witnessed the rise of fascism, and complete division during the cold war, seemed to bridging the gap by the continuous evolution of the European Union. In the contemporary world order international analyst visualize the EU as one of the emerging bloc but different from the US.

But what the [financial] crisis [in the world's capital markets] does is to undermine the ideology of neo-liberalism which gives the Left a chance to intensify its struggle against neo-liberalism. And in so far as the recession that is arising will hurt not just the workers and peasants but even sections of the middle classes which have hitherto been beneficiaries of neo-liberalism, the soil for this struggle will be more fertile now. So, the short answer to this question is that the Indian policy-makers left to themselves will not change course, but we have to make them change course. Eminent economist Prabhat Patnaik replies exclusively to a set of interview questions from Pragoti's Editorial Team. Prabhat Patnaik is a leading Marxist economist, and is a professor at Centre for Economic Studies and Planning at Jawaharlal Nehru University. He is also the vice-chairman of the Planning Board in the state of Kerala.

J0hn Maynard Keynes, though bourgeois in his outlook, was a remarkably insightful economist, whose book Economic Consequences of the Peace was copiously quoted by Lenin at the Second Congress of the Communist International to argue that conditions had ripened for the world revolution. But even Keynes’ insights could not fully comprehend the paradox that is capitalism.

A response to the Union Budget 2009-10 by the Network for Social Accountability.

In many ways Agantuk is an inciting film. Though there is a genuine doubt if at all the grungy middle class can really think today in the way Ray wanted them to think. The basic theme is an intellectual soul searching for a re-discovery of the lost human values. It bluntly focuses on the vices of the post-modern world. The reckless immorality of the elite class, their greed for material possessions is harshly criticized. A ‘civilized’ person was defined as the person who can wipe out an entire population with lethal weapon by just pressing a button but has awfully forgotten how to embrace an alien stranger!

In post-independence and post-partition Congress-ruled West Bengal, the echoes of famine continued to be heard in the 1950s. The collusion between rice mill-owners, jotdars and food hoarders created an artificial food crisis. These proprietor segments, who controlled rice distribution, also exercised a strangle-hold over the villages and formed the rural backbone of the Bengal Congress.