Jobless Growth under UPA to Jobloss Growth under Modi

THE Indian economy in the 70s and 80s were marked with moderate growth rates of 3 to 4 per cent and registered up to 2 per cent growth in employment (SWI-2018). But markedly the post reform period of the 90s and 2000s clocked less than even 1 per cent of growth in employment corresponding to an economic growth of 7-8 per cent. This was also a period of a structural transformation with a reduced workforce in agriculture with even the absolute number falling since 2004. Increasingly people were on the lookout for non-farm employment with construction and NREGS supplementing it.

Last Years

THROUGH Bismarck’s Emergency Laws against, the Socialist German Workers, movement, the route to the Karlsbad water cure, which had done Marx so much good, was barred to him. From 1878 on his physical suffering grew worse again and hindered him increasingly in his work. But he was not the man to give in to illness and pain. In this sense also he fought to the end.

National Conference on Agrarian Crisis

OVER 300 participants including intellectuals, university professors, college students, scientists, bankers, lawyers, labour unions, women’s organizations, social activists, media-persons and others, deliberated on the continuing agrarian crisis over three days on March 01–03 at the national conference of the ‘Nation for Farmers Forum’ in the India International Centre, New Delhi. Very significantly, the audience in the India International Centre included large numbers of young people, several in their early twenties.

LDF Candidates Announced

ON March 9, before the announcement of schedule for the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, Left Democratic Front in Kerala announced its candidates for the 20 constituencies in the state. CPI(M) is contesting 16 seats and CPI in four. Six MLA’s and six sitting MP’s are in the fray, CPI(M) state secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan said in a media conference at Thiruvananthapuram.

CPI(M) central committee member and MP, K Sreemathy will contest again in Kannur. A former health minister of Kerala during 2006-011, Sreemathy also functions as AIDWA’s all India treasurer.

Industrial Workers Fight for Rights in Special ‘Japanese & ‘South Korean Zones’ in India

ON the very first day of the two-day countrywide general strike by workers on January 8-9, police in the Congress-ruled Rajasthan lathi-charged, used teargas and fired on the peaceful assembly of the workers in front of Japanese company Daikin Airconditioning Private Limited in the so-called ‘Japanese Zone’ in the Neemrana industrial area in Alwar district. Several workers were injured in the police action. The police also filed false cases against several workers and arrested them, 18 of them are still in jail.

Economics and Imperialism

MAINSTREAM bourgeois economics which is what occupies a hegemonic position in the academic world today is often criticized for being “unreal”, for proceeding on the basis of assumptions that obviously do not correspond to reality. This criticism however, though valid, does not capture its real intent, which is to serve as a means of camouflaging imperialism.

Women Resolve to Fight for the Womens’ Charter

ON March 8, thousands of women took to the streets of Delhi marching from Mandi House to Parliament Street in solidarity with the International Day of the Women, which witnesses’ global participation. In the spirit of fighting back, thousands of women thronged the streets of Delhi, with a spectrum of demands, from safety and the right to live with dignity to minimum wages and fair compensation of their work.

Air strikes and Defence Preparedness

THE air strikes by India across the Line of Control (LoC) have been accompanied by much chest-thumping by the prime minister, by government and ruling party spokespersons, and camp-follower TV and other media personalities. This despite India’s reluctance or inability to release convincing evidence such as imagery of damage caused to and inside the targeted structures in Jaba Top, or evidence of a Pakistani F-16 fighter brought down during the Pakistani counter-strike. Pakistan has gone to town claiming that only a single crow was killed, and only a few trees were destroyed.

War Cannot Solve the Problems it Can Only Aggravate Them

WAR can only aggravate, it cannot solve problems, observed the noted economist and public intellectual Prabhat Patnaik, Professor Emeritus of Economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University while delivering the inaugural lecture of the Haryana unit of AIPSO at Karnal. The focal theme of his lecture was "War Versus Peace".

Lok Sabha Election: A Crucial Battle

THE 17th Lok Sabha election, the notification for which has been issued, is going to be the most consequential election in the history of independent India. Much is at stake. This election will have a bearing on the future of the secular-democratic Republic as enshrined in the Constitution.

Five years of Modi rule have already weakened and eroded the basic principles on which the Constitution rests. An authoritarian Hindutva State looms ahead if the BJP succeeds in coming back to power.

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