THE BJP as we know is a Hindu-supremacist party. It is the political front of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a fascistic organisation which believes in establishing a Hindu rashtra. Though the BJP itself cannot openly espouse this vision because of its need to remain within the four corners of the constitution, it is trying its best to realise this vision de facto. But what does a Hindu rashtra really mean? The fact that it entails the subversion of secularism and the reduction of the Muslim minority, in particular, to the status of second class citizens, is clear.

IN a document like the New Education Policy, one must distinguish platitudes from new provisions, including within the latter even the dropping of old platitudes. Thus phrases like “education is a public good”, “6 per cent of GDP should be earmarked for education” are just platitudes, unless some concrete suggestions are advanced to realise to them.

I HAVE written about this in the past, but since bad economics comes thick and fast from the representatives of finance capital, especially the Bretton Woods institutions located in Washington DC, there is no harm in my repeating myself.

The issue relates to a fiscal deficit and has acquired urgency at present because revenues of governments everywhere in the world, including India, have declined owing to the pandemic-induced lockdown, while the need for government spending on relief and healthcare has escalated steeply, necessitating larger fiscal deficits.

WHAT had been only a suggestion by several prescient members of the capitalist establishment till now, has become official policy, at least in Britain where Prime Minister Boris Johnson has announced that his government will undertake public investment to stimulate the economy, as FD Roosevelt had done under the New Deal in the 1930s in the US. In fact, Johnson specifically referred to Roosevelt’s New Deal, and expressed his intention of increasing taxes on the rich if necessary.

BETWEEN, say December 25, 2019, and June 23, 2020, world crude (brent) oil prices have fallen by nearly 37 per cent. They had fallen by over 60 per cent between end-December and mid-April, but there has been some price-recovery since then; even so, the decline in world prices till June 23 has been quite dramatic. In India however, over this very period, petrol and diesel prices have been going up sharply and are now higher than ever before; in fact diesel prices have increased even more sharply than petrol prices and the difference between the two has largely disappeared.