The aim of all fascistic governments is to disempower the people; and the Modi government is no exception. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) which promised one member in every rural household a maximum of 100 days of employment per year was a demand-driven scheme.

Kliberal opinion holds that the international monetary and financial system is a device for promoting the interests of all participating countries by providing a convenient payments arrangement within which trade can be carried on.

Karl Marx had once said that all criticism must begin with the criticism of religion. Paraphrasing Marx one can say in the current economic context that all criticism must begin with the criticism of the GDP.

Hearing a petition on November 22 to remove the term "socialism" from the Preamble of the Indian Constitution, the Chief Justice of India made two significant observations.

When Azerbaijan as the Presidency of this year's Conference of Parties (COP29) held at Baku, in Azerbaijan, informed delegates working on extended time that participating countries had arrived at an agreement, there were many who disagreed.

In global climate negotiations, that continued at the twenty ninth edition of the Conference of Parties (COP29) in Baku, Azerbaijan, there is agreement on one issue.

It is common for governments these days to provide fiscal transfers to capitalists, whether through reduced corporate tax rates, or by providing direct cash subsidies, to encourage greater investment by them and thereby stimulate the economy.

Trump's victory in the US Presidential election conforms to a pattern presently observable across the world, namely a collapse of the liberal centre and a growth in support either for the Left, or for the extreme Right, the neo-fascists, in situations in which the Left is absent or weak.

The Kazan summit of the BRICS countries was a historic one for several reasons: first, it created a new category called “partner nations” as a step towards full membership, and accepted 13 such new “partner” countries, among whom were Cuba and Bolivia.

The Sveriges Riksbank Prize, the Nobel for "Economic Sciences", has always been controversial. This is true of the 2024 award to Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson as well.

This year's Nobel Prize in economics (the Riksbank Prize to be more precise) has been awarded to three US-based economists for their research into what promotes or hinders the growth of wealth among nations.

Several international organisations are now engaged in the business of measuring what they call "poverty". The World Bank has been in it for some time, but now we have a new measure of "Multidimensional Poverty" brought out by the UNDP and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI).

In early October, in a show of pique, a European Commission proposal to impose additional tariffs of up to 35.3 per cent (on top of the pre-existing 10 per cent) on electrical vehicles (EVs) imported from China, was passed by a majority vote in the European parliament.

The "inevitable striving of finance capital", Lenin had written in Imperialism, (is) "to enlarge its spheres of influence and even its actual territory".

The fact that the world economy has slowed down since the financial crisis of 2008 is beyond dispute. In fact even conservative American economists have started using the term “secular stagnation” to describe the current situation (though they have their own peculiar definition for it).

Europe is clearly battling to stall its decline in the global economy. Most recently, the Mario Draghi report on “The future of European competitiveness” commissioned by the European Union reflected that sentiment.

West Africa, which had been largely under French colonial rule, never saw decolonisation of the sort that India did.

During the entire post-war period when it has been in existence in the metropolitan countries, democracy has never been in as bizarre a state as it is today. Democracy is supposed to mean the pursuit of policies that are in conformity with the wishes of the electorate.

During Modi’s visit to Ukraine (why he visited Ukraine at all at the present time remains a mystery), Zelensky asked India not to purchase fuel from Russia in violation of western sanctions, that is, to fall in line with the “unilateral” western sanctions.

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.

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 in that country.

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 were not so tragic.

India's quasi-federal democracy, which was in danger of collapsing into a centralised authoritarianism, seems to be holding up.

The French economist J B Say had believed that there could never be a problem of aggregate demand in any economy, that whatever was produced was ipso facto demanded.

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.

The Sri Lankan government announced that it has reached an agreement with its foreign private creditors to restructure the $12.5 billion of its external debt that they hold. The agreement incorporates a novel instrument: a macro-linked bond for which the payout is linked to the GDP performance of the debtor country.

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 ‘developed nation’ by 2047.

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 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 verge of being added to this list, in which case it would have been the second major European power, after Italy, to have a fascist government.

Figures on India's balance of payments in financial year 2023-24, recently released by the Reserve Bank of India, have added to the hype on India's growth story.

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 Melenchon), have come together to form a New Popular Front to take on the fascist challenge of Marine Le Pen.

Poverty is taken to be a homogeneous phenomenon irrespective of the mode of production that is under consideration. Even reputed economists believe in this homogeneous conception of poverty.

The election results, which gave both the BJP and the NDA far lower seats than they had in the previous parliament and led to a coalition government, surprised many. But now, attention has shifted to assessing what that would do to the behaviour and policies in different spheres of this version of a Modi-led government.

The fundamental issue raised by Hollywood writers when they had gone on a strike against being replaced by artificial intelligence, somehow receded to the background after the resolution of that particular conflict; but it remains a fundamental issue.

There has been a significant diffusion of production occurring in the world economy. Many call this phenomenon a shift from a US-led world economy to a "multipolar world economy", but no matter what one thinks of this description, the fact of diffusion is indubitable.

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party's inability to secure a parliamentary majority in India's general election has shattered Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s aura of invincibility. Modi will now have to rely on coalition partners to pass legislation, potentially curbing his efforts to consolidate power.

Against all odds, in the elections to India’s parliament, whose results were announced last week, the opposition I.N.D.I.A. alliance managed to prevent the rampaging ruling party, Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), from securing a majority on its own.

A Distinction is drawn in economics between demand-constrained systems and resource-constrained systems (which for simplicity and symmetry we shall call supply-constrained systems).

The results of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections have come as a shock to those who had mistakenly believed in the problematic exit polls, which continued the narrative so assiduously cultivated by the previous Modi government.

The current protests in US university campuses demanding "divestment" from firms linked to Israel's military machine, are reminiscent of the protests that had swept these campuses in the late sixties and early seventies demanding an end to the Vietnam war.

Each strand of political praxis is informed by a political philosophy which analyses the world around us, especially, in modern times, its economic characteristics. On the basis of this analysis, the particular political philosophy sets out the objectives which have to be struggled for, and the political praxis informed by it carries out this struggle.

Less than a year back, a former chief executive of Mastercard, Ajay Banga, was in a surprise move picked to head the World Bank. Putting a Wall Street player addicted to profits in charge of a development institution claiming to help lift poor countries out of their underdevelopment seemed incongruous.

John Stuart Mill was among the foremost liberal thinkers of modern times who wrote extensively on economics and philosophy. Though under the influence of his wife Harriet Taylor Mill, he came closer towards socialism late in his life, it was a kind of cooperative socialism that attracted him; he continues to be regarded primarily as a pre-eminent liberal thinker.

Thames Water, one of England's many regional water monopolies, infamously privatised by Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s and symbolising the dramatic turn in economic policy that neoliberalism implied, is finally collapsing.

India's government has since the year of its G20 Presidency claimed to have restored the country's role as the 'Voice of the South' in global dialogues. That is often backed up by reference to its efforts to focus attention on the problem of debt stress and default in poor developing countries, and to the induction of the African Union into the G20.

The other day the Chief Executive Officer of Niti Ayog made a fantastic claim, that the poverty ratio in India had fallen below 5 percent according to the 2022-23 consumption expenditure survey data.

There is a paradox at the core of the efflorescence of science that has occurred over the last millennium. In essence this efflorescence has the potential to increase human freedom immensely.

At the time of writing, the 13th ministerial meet of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) is under way in Abu Dhabi. Among the many issues that are being discussed are two of concern for less developed countries generally and India in particular.

Indian federalism is on the verge of breakdown. Ministers from opposition-ruled States have taken to the streets in New Delhi to protest against discrimination by the Centre.

In The Junius Pamphlet written from jail in 1915, Rosa Luxemburg had said that the choice before mankind was between barbarism and socialism. Liberal opinion would contest this, arguing that the barbarism that marked the two world wars and the period in between was unrelated to capitalism;

The BJP government holds that truth is what Modi says; if evidence points otherwise then evidence must be wrong and should be suppressed. Modi says that India never had it so good as during the last decade of his government; but since official statistics contradict him, the statistics must be wrong and the statistical system must be changed.

Recruitment drives held over the last week of January, in Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh and Rohtak in Haryana, for Indian workers to undertake construction and caregiver jobs in Israel have captured global attention.

There are well-known problems associated with the concept of gross domestic product as well as with its measurement. The inclusion of the service sector within GDP is something that Adam Smith would have objected to on the conceptual grounds that those employed in this sector constituted "unproductive workers";

The unemployment situation is worse today than it has ever been in post-independence India. There are two distinct elements that have contributed to this situation. One is the fact that the output recovery from the fall caused by the pandemic-linked lockdown has not been accompanied by a comparable employment recovery.

On January 10, the IMF announced its decision to release $4.7 billion out of a $57 billion bailout package sanctioned in 2018 to perennially debt-distressed Argentina, then under a right-wing government headed by Mauricio Macrio.

The significance of Lenin's Imperialism lay in the fact that it totally revolutionised the perception of the revolution. Marx and Engels had already visualised the possibility of colonial and dependent countries having revolutions of their own even before the proletarian revolution in the metropolis.

The recent collapse of the protracted negotiations to restructure Zambia's external debt, following a default in November 2020, underlines the failure of the prevailing international financial architecture to address global challenges.

We observe a strange phenomenon everyday, so strange that its strangeness goes generally unnoticed. Government spokespersons from the prime minister downwards go on repeating ad nauseam that India is the most rapidly growing major economy in the world today, that it will soon become a 5 trillion dollar economy, and that it has overtaken China in terms of the growth rate of the gross domestic product.

A longish bull-run that added to investor cheer over Christmas week 2023 took the most cited index of Indian stock market activity, the Sensex, to a record 77,240 level on the last trading day of the year.

Argentina's new president Javier Milei proposes to use US dollars as the currency of his country, while abolishing its central bank altogether. What is involved in this proposal is not just maintaining a fixed exchange rate between the dollar and the domestic currency, but an abolition of the domestic currency altogether.

Imperialist hegemony over the third world is exercised not just through arms and economic might but also through the hegemony of ideas, by making the victims see the world the way imperialism wants them to see it.