THE WTO has been a major weapon used by the advanced countries to roll back the structures that the third world dirigiste regimes which came into existence after decolonisation had erected for achieving a degree of self-reliance. The TRIPS agreement for instance which tightens the multinational corporations’ stranglehold over technology was pushed through the WTO. But the advanced capitalist world has of late found an even stronger weapon, which consists of bilateral or regional trade agreements (RTAs) like the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP).

UNDER the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), education is to become a tradable service. In August 2005, India had made a market access offer in the sphere of higher education under the GATS; this offer will become a firm commitment later this month at the Nairobi ministerial meeting, which is set to bring the Doha Round of WTO negotiations to a final conclusion, unless India withdraws from it.

IN the era of finance capital, the familiar distortion of reality which lies in thinking that society is flourishing when the financial markets are on an uptrend, has its logical obverse in the equally familiar thought that the economic malaise in society arises exclusively because of some malfunctioning in the world of finance; and such malfunctioning in turn is attributed not to any intrinsic problems associated with this world of finance itself but to the unwise interference on the part of some external entity, notably the State, due to its having abandoned the principles of “sound finan

AT first sight, the “Make in India” campaign appears innocuous, a pipe-dream perhaps but a rather harmless one. If the world’s big companies come to “make” things in India for selling all over the world, which is the thrust of the “Make in India” campaign of the Modi government, then what is wrong with it?

THE International Labour Organisation (ILO) provides useful data on the world labour force. The concept of “labour force” includes both the employed and the unemployed. The employed part of the labour force consists of: wage and salaried workers (who are called “employees”); the self-employed workers with “employees” (who are called “employers”); and the self-employed workers without “employees” (among whom are “own account workers”, unpaid family workers, and members of producers’ cooperatives).