ONE of the main arguments advanced by the proponents of liberalisation policies in developing countries including India is that capital would flow to the global South in search of higher rate of return. This would create new investments and hence growth and employment would increase. Also, the inflow of foreign funds would bring tangible outcomes of higher technological learning which are embodied in machines and organisational culture.

THE budget 2024-25 presented by the finance minister of the newly elected NDA government expresses the political and economic tensions of the coalition government and a half-hearted attempt to appear to be addressing the major issues that drove the election results. True, that India is currently the fastest growing economy of the world, when Europe is yet to come out of the protracted stagnation, low growth in the US and Canada and China records a relative slowing down after long stretches of high growth.

IT is the time when Instagram feeds will be flooded with photos and reels of the mega fortnight marriage event of the Ambanis and the eye balls of average Indians would be rolling to follow the spectacle of wealth, offering glaring evidence of the billionaire raj that India could produce at the end of three decades of neoliberal reforms. According to the latest study of the World Inequality Lab, India’s inequality levels have reached unprecedented levels, highest ever since 1922.

COMMODIFICATION of services is one of the major avenues of expanding the realm of capital in the neoliberal age. Commodity for Marx has no reference to corporeal reality. Something which is produced for sale whether it is goods or services does not make a conceptual difference in Marx’s notion of commodity. For Marx, commodity is a social relationship independent of its physical nature. The expansion of services in the count of GDP is partly because of commodification of services which were earlier supplied from a community or collectively owned pool.

Enable GingerCannot connect to Ginger Check your internet connectionor reload the browserDisable GingerRephraseRephrase with Ginger (Ctrl+Alt+E)USE values are created by labour and nature. But capital relations attach value to products that are being produced for the purpose of creating surplus. Production in capitalism is production of surplus value and this involves a process of appropriating labour and nature.