INDIA is facing an unprecedented slowdown of the economy with GDP growth slumping to 5 per cent in the June quarter, agriculture growing by only 2 per cent and manufacturing by a mere 0.6 per cent. Private consumption expenditure – spending by families on consumption – has slipped downwards, bank credit has decelerated, investment is dipping and sales of common commodities are declining. Such is the sweep of this slowdown that lakhs of workers have either been thrown out of jobs or laid off.

AYODHYA, from a Hindu politico laboratory to Politico-Religious Capital of the Hindu Right is the correct way of defining the transformation of this city. Ayodhya, which was considered to be a city of piousness for devout Hindus based on Hindu mysticism, over the years, has completely changed. Thanks to the experiment of the Sangh Parivar, of course the RSS in the lead, the Ayodhya has metamorphosised into a centre of syndicates of various kinds; spiritual, land, political and criminal.

BANK Employees Federation of India (BEFI) and All India Bank Employees Association (AIBEA) have given a joint nation-wide strike call on October 22 opposing the proposal made by Finance Minister, Nirmala Sitaraman to merge ten public sector banks (PSB).Calling the merger as a step closer towards privatisation of public sector banks, the unions sought the government to stop imposing neo-liberal banking reforms and demanded that it should ensure recovery of bad loans along with strict action against defaulters.  The unions also demanded that the customers should not be harassed with penal cha

YEAR 2019 is the 150th birth anniversary of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Gandhiji remains the unparalleled mass leader of the Indian people. He successfully mobilised people from the whole of India’s vast diversity in the struggle for independence from British colonial rule.As my generation grew up in post-independent India, a question always arose that demanded an answer.  This unrivalled leader of the Indian people would often be living in the house of one of the biggest capitalists in India, Ghanshyam Das Birla.

UNEMPLOYMENT in the cities is rising acutely since demonetisation was implemented in the country by Narendra Modi on September 9, 2016. The voices of the unemployed could not be heard at that time since most of the people who had to lose their jobs were from the unorganised sector. The informal sector comprises 93 per cent of the city jobs, the figure two decades ago was nearly 75 per cent. This figure explains the humongous loss done to the job security in the cities. The informal sector workers were the hardest hit because of demonetisation.