WITH the government being forced to withdraw from the RCEP agreement, an argument has arisen: if India is not competitive with other countries in producing a whole range of goods, which is why the producers of such goods within the country objected to the agreement in the first place, then why should it go on producing them? And a related argument states: in protecting uncompetitive producers, the country is penalising consumers who would have otherwise accessed cheaper imported goods; is this not unfair?

THE news that India’s rank in 2019 according to the Global Hunger Index (GHI) was 102nd among the 117 countries for whom this index was calculated (it is not calculated for countries where hunger is not a problem), instead of causing consternation as it should have, has generated a rather inconsequential debate. This debate ironically has been concerned with two issues.

THE class function of Hindutva is becoming clearer by the day. In the lee of Hindutva the Modi government is embarking on a massive programme of privatisation of the public sector, and of attack on the working class. Such a programme could not have been launched under the “normal” circumstances of bourgeois rule; it would have aroused stiff opposition.

THE anti-colonial struggle saw the emergence of a pan-Indian national consciousness that was superimposed upon a pre-existing “nationality” consciousness based on linguistic regions. The pan-Indian national consciousness in other words was superimposed upon a Bengali or Gujarati or Tamil or Odiya consciousness; and the anti-colonial struggle saw the flourishing of both kinds of consciousness.

JOAN Robinson, the well-known economist, had drawn attention to a fundamental difference between foreign direct investment in the manufacturing sector and foreign direct investment in a sector that extracted an exhaustible resource, such as a mineral product. This difference can be illustrated with an example.