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The Prospect of Food Shortage
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| 09 April, 2018,
Prabhat Patnaik |
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Contrary to the fears of orthodox economics, persistent and even growing hunger in the world today arises not due to “excessive population” but due to the social arrangement; not because there is too little output relative to population but because there is too little demand relative to output.
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Technological Change and Impoverishment
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| 19 March, 2018,
Prabhat Patnaik |
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Socio-economic effects of technological change depend upon the property relations within the system they occur. While in socialism higher labour productivity can improve the conditions of workers, in capitalism, the same has lead to growing relative labour reserves, and hence impoverishment.
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A Dangerous Period
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| 16 February, 2018,
Prabhat Patnaik |
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Contemporary Fascism around the world is emerging as neo-liberal capitalism’s “gift” to mankind in the period of its maturity, when it submerges the world economy in a crisis, and reaches a dead-end from which there is no obvious escape.
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The Economy: 70 years after Independence
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| 30 August, 2017,
C.P. Chandrasekhar |
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Indias' reliance on fortuitous and volatile stimuli to drive growth has resulted in inadequate job creation and widened inequalities while failing to address social deprivation.
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Imperialism Still Alive and Kicking: An Interview With Prabhat Patnaik
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| 20 June, 2017,
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Imperialism is the arrangement that the capitalist system sets up for imposing income deflation on the working population of the third world for countering the threat of inflation that would otherwise erode the value of money in the metropolis and make the system unviable. A delinking from globalization by an alternative State, based on a worker-peasant alliance, is required for improved living conditions of the third world working population.
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Narendra Modi on Poverty
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| 20 March, 2017,
Prabhat Patnaik |
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When Narendra Modi talks of shifting away from giving doles to the poor, what he has in mind is that the money being currently used for welfare schemes for the poor should be withdrawn from such schemes and handed over to the corporate magnates.
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Demonetization as the Basis for a Fiscal Stimulus
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| 07 December, 2016,
Prabhat Patnaik |
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What the BJP spokespersons are putting forward that the cash which gets disabled in the black economy would enable the government to spend more on infrastructure or provide cash transfers to the people is sheer deception.
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Developing "Infrastructure"
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| 25 October, 2016,
Prabhat Patnaik |
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One can intervene in income distribution in an egalitarian direction by restraining the investment in infrastructure that is met at the expense of other socially-pressing needs and rationing the infrastructure in question.
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Rajan's Exit
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| 15 September, 2016,
Prabhat Patnaik |
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The reason for the governments dithering over an extension of Raghuram Rajans term, which led to his decision not to ask for one, cannot be attributed to his stance on interest rates.
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The State of the Economy
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| 08 April, 2016,
Prabhat Patnaik |
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There is a remarkable constriction of the size of the domestic market and stagnation of industrial sector in India due to inadequate purchasing power in the hands of the people.
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Growth and Hunger
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| 23 February, 2015,
Prabhat Patnaik |
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The declining foodgrain absorption in India is indicative of growing hunger- a symptom of deprivation, caused by the privatisation of services like education and health.
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Policy Paralysis and Inflation
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| 03 February, 2011,
C.P. Chandrasekhar |
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The price trends over the last one-and-a-half years suggest that inflation is being driven by factors which are structurally embedded in the economic environment generated by the government's neoliberal reform agenda adopted for two decades now. Further, neoliberal thinking is leading not only to policy paralysis and absurd reasoning, but also to policy responses that are contrary to what is needed.
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Diluting the Right to Food
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| 02 February, 2011,
C.P. Chandrasekhar |
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In its task of formulating the Food Security Bill, the National Advisory Council has ended up recognizing the supply constraints that could hinder implementation of the bill which guarantees universal access to food through a public distribution system.
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The Criminalization of Dissent
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| 13 January, 2011,
Prabhat Patnaik |
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The official position idealising economic growth as a national goal and vilifying any opposition to it as anti-national, is reification. But, equally importantly, it is dangerous, both because it criminalizes ideological dissent and because it implicitly justifies corporate control over the State.
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Food Security sans PDS: Universalization through targeting?
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| 08 November, 2010,
Smita Gupta |
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The obvious strategy to tackle hunger and malnutrition is to universalize and strengthen the Public Distribution System (PDS) by making adequate food available at affordable prices. The argument is more compelling for India where endemic hunger continues to badly affect a large section of people. It is therefore time that the NAC and the Government stop putting forward specious arguments against a universal bill, and instead use the current food stocks and the forthcoming rabi crop as an opportunity for full-fledged food security.
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Making a Mess of the Food Security Bill
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| 09 September, 2010,
Jayati Ghosh |
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The NAC draft bill has come as an unwelcome surprise as instead of altering the divisive and unfair division of people into BPL beneficiaries and others who would be excluded from public distribution, it reinforces the division. In fact, in pushing for a greatly truncated and extremely exclusionary PDS system, the draft effectively undermines the PDS itself.
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Dr. K.N. Raj
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| 09 August, 2010,
Prabhat Patnaik |
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For students of my generation, Dr. K.N. Raj, who passed away recently, was a truly iconic figure. The earlier generation of economists, V.K.R.V. Rao, Bhabatosh Datta and A.K. Dasgupta were temporally distant from us; his illustrious Bengali contemporaries were spatially distant from us. Dr. Raj was centre stage, brilliant and inspiring. His precise speech, his robust socialism, his thoughtful writings and his absolute command over empirical data left us spell-bound.
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Managing the Food Economy
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| 07 August, 2010,
C.P. Chandrasekhar |
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The National Advisory Councils proposal for a system of targeted universalisation will simply limit the impact of the PDS. The proposal is based on the grounds of constrained supply whereas in reality there seems to be excess stockholding by the government which can be utilised to ensure access to food as well as widen and deepen the productive base in the agricultural sector.
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India: A Setback for Neo-Liberalism
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| 10 June, 2010,
Prabhat Patnaik |
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The current developments in India mark the beginning of a process of the polarization of society into two camps, a pro-imperialist camp supported by the Fund, the Bank, globalized finance and the MNCs, and an anti-imperialist camp led by the Left but encompassing diverse elements. The degree to which consolidation of the latter camp can be successfully accomplished depends crucially on the ability of the Left to overcome sectarianism and narrowness of outlook and unite the widest possible segments of anti-imperialist social forces.
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The Political Economy of the Enabling State
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| 10 March, 2010,
Jayati Ghosh |
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While this years Economic Survey identifies the basic goal of economic policy as inclusive growth, this is to be delivered by a change in focus to an enabling government from an actively interventionist one. This vision excludes the possibility that the process of market-driven economic growth itself generates greater material insecurity and impoverishment for a significant section of the population.
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