Food Inflation: Is It Only About Weather?

ONCE again, working people feel the heat of rise in vegetable, rice and pulses price and an increase in CPI general index in June 2023. The inflation rate is a general increase in prices, moderated since November 2022 after long episodes of high inflation. As we know that core inflation which excludes commodities such as food, fuel and light, that generally show high fluctuations in prices, remained stable after falling sharply in April-May 2023.

Consumption Growth Slows but Corporates Bag High Profits

THE recent press release by the National Statistical Office on the provisional estimates of National Income quarterly estimates for the fourth quarter (January to March) together with the provisional estimates for the year 2022-23 deserves attention. It provides estimates for GDP and related figures of 2022-23 in current and constant 2011-12 prices with the corresponding figures of 2020-21 (2nd Revised estimates) and of 2021-22 (1st Revised Estimates).The crucial headlines of the statistics from the recent press release are the following.

Flexibilisation of Production and Resistance

INDUSTRIAL structure is undergoing change across the world with the rise of local and international networks of production. The Fordist regime of vertically integrated production organisation is gradually being replaced by modularised horizontal and diagonal networks coordinated often by MNCs or TNCs and spread across the globe. The essential difference between the two regimes is the element of flexibility that redefines the nature of contract both between capital and capital and capital and labour.

Financialisation and Slow Growth in Private Investment

SINCE the global financial crisis, investment growth has not recovered to its pre-crisis level worldwide. India despite being a fast growing economy, the growth in gross fixed capital formation shows a declining trend in the past two decades. In the post-crisis period, the governments introduced various institutional reforms in the rubric of ‘ease of doing business’, also corporates could have greater access to finance and external borrowings and public investment was geared to crowd in private corporate investment.

Let’s Not Misread Recent Fall in Inflation

THIS is indeed good news that the combined general consumer price index (CPI) declined for the fourth consecutive month from January 2023 to April 2023. In rural areas the successive decline in inflation as per the general CPI is also recorded for the past four months and in case of urban areas, the decline in inflation is for the third consecutive month.Inflation figures measure the change in prices on a month on month or year on year basis reflecting the rise in prices with reference to previous time point.

Disconcerting Trends in the Economy

THE recovery of the economy immediately after the pandemic was reflected through positive and increasing growth in various sectors as businesses were back to normalcy. Much of these growth rates have been reflective of the pent up demand accumulated due to lock down and related disruptions. India records a relatively high growth rate compared to other countries and is estimated to be the second largest contributor of regional growth after China.

Capitalism and Unfree Labour

WAGE labour is a distinctive feature of capitalism but not necessarily all wage labour can be considered as ‘free labour’, neither is it true that capitalism is inimical to unfree labour. Marx sarcastically mentioned that a worker is doubly free in the sense s/he is free to sell labour power as her/his own commodity and also free of all means of production by which s/he could have valorised her/his own labour.

Patriarchy Subsidises Capitalism

THE uninterrupted supply of labour in capitalism is ensured by a socio-cultural arrangement of producing the ‘worker’ within family and household. This is not a capitalist site of production where goods and services are produced as commodities by engaging wage labour. Instead the worker as an able-bodied subject is produced within the family by involving unpaid labour.While discussing about primary accumulation of capital, Marx did refer to a process of alienating direct producers from the means of production and this has been done by the use of coercion.

Annual PLFS Report: Increased Vulnerability and Erosion of Rights

THE latest annual report of Periodic Labour Force Survey, 2021-22 published by NSSO, Government of India draws attention to many perennial problems that India seems to be facing in the employment front. True indeed that the annual unemployment rate has marginally declined compared to the pandemic period but the structural concerns such as high rates of youth unemployment, high unemployment rates within the educated, increased vulnerability due to rising self-employment and erosion of rights of regular salaried workers, continue to remain as dark spots in India’s labour market.

…And A World to Win!

THE Communist Manifesto begins with the profound observation that the history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles indicating history in the making through class contestations. Capitalism has undergone different regimes of accumulation coordinated through institutions and regulations conducive for particular regimes.

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Peoples Democracy

economic policy & Labour