ECONOMIC NOTES

Rural Labour in the Modi Years

Enable GingerCannot connect to Ginger Check your internet connectionor reload the browserDisable in this text fieldRephraseRephrase current sentenceBY now it is well-established by several researchers that the real wage rate in rural India, whether of agricultural labour or of rural labour in general, remained virtually stagnant between 2014-15 and 2022-23 (Das and Usami in Review of Agrarian Studies, July-December 2023; Dreze and Khera’s findings reported in The Telegraph­, April 21, 2024).

Fetishising the Growth Rate of GDP

Enable GingerCannot connect to Ginger Check your internet connectionor reload the browserDisable in this text fieldRephraseRephrase current sentenceJOHN Stuart Mill was among the foremost liberal thinkers of modern times who wrote extensively on economics and philosophy. Though under the influence of his wife Harriet Taylor Mill, he came closer towards socialism late in his life, it was a kind of cooperative socialism that attracted him; he continues to be regarded primarily as a pre-eminent liberal thinker.

The Anatomy of A ‘Hindu Rashtra’

Enable GingerCannot connect to Ginger Check your internet connectionor reload the browserDisable in this text fieldRephraseRephrase current sentenceTHE Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) was founded with the objective of establishing a Hindu rashtra, or a Hindu State. The question immediately arises: what is a Hindu State? There are several countries in the world that give primacy to one religion above all others, or are theocratic, but that makes not an iota of difference to the class nature of their states.

Working Class and the Ascendancy of Neo-Fascism

Enable GingerCannot connect to Ginger Check your internet connectionor reload the browserDisable in this text fieldRephraseRephrase current sentenceWALTER Benjamin, the German philosopher who was himself a victim of fascism, had linked the ascendancy of fascism to the failed proletarian revolutions that had preceded it. He had of course Germany in mind, where, in the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution, there had been several attempts to effect a similar revolution.

The Descent into Barbarism

Enable GingerCannot connect to Ginger Check your internet connectionor reload the browserDisable in this text fieldRephraseRephrase current sentenceIN The Junius Pamphlet written from jail in 1915, Rosa Luxemburg had said that the choice before mankind was between barbarism and socialism. Liberal opinion would contest this, arguing thatthe barbarism that marked the two world wars and the period in between was unrelated to capitalism; indeed the liberal tendency that comes to the fore under capitalism, it would claim, fought against the barbarism of that period.

The Budget and the Inversion of Reason

Enable GingerCannot connect to Ginger Check your internet connectionor reload the browserDisable in this text fieldRephraseRephrase current sentenceTHE BJP government holds that truth is what Modi says; if evidence points otherwise then evidence must be wrong and should be suppressed. Modi says that India never had it so good as during the last decade of his government; but since official statistics contradict him, the statistics must be wrong and the statistical system must be changed.

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