An article on the Economic Survey 2009-10 by Com. Moinul Hassan, Rajya Sabha member of CPI(M)
The SFI organized a two day long All India Convention on Education in JNU. In the convention, the All India leadership of SFI presented various approach papers on various aspects of education. Also, many distinguished intellectuals presented papers enumerating the anti-student policies of the government, suggesting ways for a democratization of the education sector in India. Based on these papers and discussions amongst the delegates in the Convention, a Charter of Demand was adopted, concretizing the demands for the forthcoming struggles.
That food prices have broken the ceiling and have gone beyond control, is a tragedy that is affecting many sections of the Indian population today. Yet the government has only compounded the misery by increasing fuel prices as well. It is imperative that the government must roll back the hiked fuel prices and must work on a war-footing to arrest galloping inflation. A post on the issue.
Vijay Prashad provides a succinct exposition of the role of "Guerilla warfare" in Latin America today, in the context of the success of the Bolivarian project in the continent. Article courtesy Counterpunch and Students' Struggle.
''The developed countries cannot negate their `historical responsibility' and continue with their pillage of global climate at the expense of the vast majority of humanity. They need to be forced to continue to accept per capita emissions as the basis of energy equality as every human being on the planet, should have equal access to carbon space. Such inequality – per capita emissions in
Pragoti salutes the nameless and the ordinary whose valiance and courage in life and death will not be headlines in the chronicles of the Mumbai carnage. The immediate appeals to jingoistic nationalism and communalism by the hard and soft Hindu right, and the proposals to launch war and pass draconian laws, dished out by the mainstream media, is an attempt to ensure that the people are put through more of such terror. We stand committed to the struggles of the ordinary and the nameless people of India to fight terrorism and all political harbingers of terror.
The general strike on August 20 will be a landmark in the struggle of the workers and peasants of India against the Manmohan Singh government that is bent on proving its loyalty to the big bourgeoisie in India and its allegiance to international finance capital and by extension US imperialism. A PRAGOTI Editorial
Anand Patwardhan's documentary film "War and Peace (Jung aur Aman)" was screened at IIT Bombay on 30th August 2009. During and after the discussion session of the documentary film, our editorial team member Anirban Ghatak took a short interview of Anand. Anand answered the questions with equal determination and conviction which we are pretty used to see in his films. Here we present the interview.
हाल के विधानसभा चुनावों और राजस्थान में वामपंथी आन्दोलन के अनुभवों के बारे में जनवादी महिला समिति की राजस्थान राज्य सचिव और सी.पी.आई.एम की राज्य समिति सदस्या दुर्गा स्वामी से प्रगति के संपादक मंडल सदस्य टिकेन्दर पंवार का विशेष साक्षात्कार।
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.
“Sen, a Nobel Prize winner in Economics and a Lamont Professor of Economics and Moral Philosophy at Harvard University took an intelligent and pragmatic approach by pondering over the idea of ‘enhancement of justice’ by ‘removal of injustice’ instead of imagining an a priori perfect just society, or ‘identifying perfectly just social arrangements’ or ‘just institutions’ in his book. However, the book has several deficiencies, and in this article, we would try to point out those ontological, methodological and epistemological limits/problems of Sen’s idea of justice.”
Prof.Prabhat Patnaik lucidly explains the dialectical relationship between 'Socialism' and Welfarism' and argues for the necessity of 'political intervention' of the left in welfare measures for the transformation of people from 'Objects' to 'Subjects'.
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.
Well before the global financial crisis finally broke in September 2008, most people in developing countries were already reeling under the effects of dramatic volatility in global food and fuel markets. From late 2006, prices of most primary commodities first increased very rapidly, then collapsed even more sharply from their peaks in May-June 2008. This was not due to real economic forces, but rather financial activity, specifically the involvement of investors in index funds,writes Jayati Ghosh.
Prof.Robert Pollin, Economics Professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst reviews Prof. Prabhat Patnaik's latest book, "Value of Money". The review is attached along with this post.
Prabir Purkayastha argues that the Left needs to recreate a new vision of socialism by moving away from the 20th century Fordian paradigm to a new way of looking at future production systems.
Films like other performative cultural forms can speak the language of its own times, in which they have been created and situated. As a visual reflection of society in which it is contextualized, it can speak both covertly and overtly about the past and present world, and albeit can articulate politics and reflect upon philosophy as well. James Cameron’s Avatar, a mainstream Hollywood blockbuster is not an exception in this regard. Maidul Islam writes in his review of the film.
Students' Struggle, the organ of the Students' Federation of India has been carrying a section roughly titled, "The book that inspired me". Economist Venkatesh Athreya recently wrote in the section, how Das Kapital inspired him.
It was quite a brave decision to watch another experimentation on Devdas that hit the screens last February in its Dev D avatar. The fear was entirely courtesy the shallow, pretentious, gaudy and doyen-of-kitsch rendition of Devdas as done by Sanjay Leela Bhansali. The nauseating melodrama of the actors combined with the crass show of “big budget” has left in it’s trail a lot many ardent Saratchandra readers bruised and fuming. However 10 odd minutes into Anurag Kashyap’s creation and the feeling is one of having ditched an abusive old lover for a better life.
On September 11, 1973, the democratically elected government of Chile was overthrown by a military coup led by Gen. Pinochet. Beginning with the murder of Allende himself, the coup unleashed a wave of barbaric repression against democraticall-minded people in Chile in which thousands were killed and tortured. The coup and the military regime which followed it had the direct support of the US.
In post-independence and post-partition Congress-ruled
The Left parties held a massive rally against price rise in the capital on 12th March 2010. This rally was attended by over 1 lakh people from various parts of the country. The rally gave a call for intensifying struggles against the UPA Government's anti-people policies. The mainstream media as usual decided to give as little coverage as possible to the rally. We present here two videos of the rally from various news channels. We will soon provide more videos/reports on the rally.
I really enjoyed the speech by Brinda Karat, Rajya Sabha member from the CPI(M) on the women's reservation bill. On a groundbreaking day where other legislators also spoke very well on the issue (albeit some Congress' legislators were more keen on fawning praise on the UPA's lynchpins - the PM and Sonia Gandhi). But Brinda Karat's evocative gratitude to the struggles by grassroots women's organisations was very apt. Embedded below is her speech in the Rajya Sabha (courtesy - Rajya Sabha TV). Also attached is the transcript of her speech in pdf format.
As I write this, 7 unruly members of parliament belonging to errant political parties - the Samajwadi Party, the Rashtriya Janata Dal in particular, have been suspended for their pathetic conduct yesterday in the Rajya Sabha. These legislators were doing their worst to prevent the Women's Reservation Bill, which now enjoys a great degree of majority support in both Houses of the Indian Parliament. This post quickly brings out some facets about the idea of quota-based representation in legislatures all across the world.
A blog post on the belied expectations on Women's Day today.
I used to discuss with my fellow comrades in the All India Kisan Sabha that the menace of wild animals is haunting the kisans in a considerable area and with our active intervention we have been able to get some reprieve in the sense that the government has allowed to kill wild boars and monkeys; they were not prepared to believe. A government of right reaction –how can it allow the culling of monkeys? But this is true no where in the country exists such permission. It is through the consistent efforts of the kisan sabha that the government was forced to cede to the demands and how was this argument taken up regarding monkeys being linked to the hindu mythological hero ‘Hanumana’; the kisans themselves raise a counter argument that these monkeys are not the inheritors of Hanuman but that of another character in the epic Ramayana ‘Bali’ who happened to be from the same species but was killed by Ram that too by adopting foul methods. Hence killing of monkeys in the contemporary times is no crime. Another victory has been the permission to kill the ‘blue bulls’. Ill narrates the entire exercise!
Israel is possibly the only unapologetic state in the world that believes in assassination of opponents as a state policy. Ironically, that this nation does "hit jobs" through its notorious spy agency - the Mossad, actually gives it an "aura" of professionalism - as much as the Mumbai underworld looked "cool" in the eyes of many during its heydays.
The Union Budget is deeply rooted in a pro-rich class bias. The Congress is back to serving its core class interests.
The Railway Budget is high on promises and low on substance. This is the hallmark of bourgeois populist politics.
On the first day of the ongoing Budget session of Parliament, the President's speech tried to tackle the question of inflation. The article is a critique of the President's position on the issue of inflation.
In mid-December 2009, I visited fishing areas in and around the Mundra coastal region which hosts the vast Mundra Port and SEZ Limited (MPSEZL). The visit to the coastal areas adjoining the Mundra port in the Kutch revealed discontent among fisherfolk, traders and pastoralists over the creation of a special economic zone in the area. Apart from environmental concerns, the traditional livelihoods of residents in the area have also been affected by the new industrial projects, leading to organised protests, as witnessed in Bhadreswar village a few months ago.
These days lots of controversy is generated over the latest Hindi movie called ‘My name is Khan’. I do not intend to write a review on it as I have not got the opportunity to watch it as yet. But going through the several reviews I could infer what the movies is all about. But to have a feeling of being a ‘Khan’ – a synonym for a muslim one does not have to go too far off to US or any other continent , such a feeling of alienation can be had even around us, in fact all around us in the so called democratic polity of our country.
Pragoti presents before its readers a guest blog from historian Subho Basu.
The people on the hills are battling for their rights in the forests. One of it happens to be the right to get timber as finished good for various purposes. This has not only been restricted but the latest policy announced by the government also smacks of class biasedness towards the rich peasant and marginalisng the poor peasant and landless households in the countryside.
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