Protesting farmers are reclaiming the idea of the nation.
Author Archive | Prabhat Patnaik
Engels on the Peasant War in Germany
At a time when peasant masses in the country are engaged in a valiant struggle for the repeal of the Central government’s three infamous laws, and have laid peaceful siege to Delhi, braving rains and bitter cold, it is worth recalling Friedrich Engels’ study of the peasant war in Germany in 1525, that also celebrated […]
Why are people going hungry in India despite a massive grain surplus?
The peasants gathered on the Delhi border understand all these issues much more clearly than either Modi or the intelligentsia advocating a shift away from food grains. Ironically, it is the latter group who are suggesting that the peasants are ignoramuses!
A matter of survival of the peasantry
The kisans gathered around the Delhi border have unerringly put their fingers on the real issue confronting them, namely their very survival as peasants.
Capitalism and inheritance
IT is often believed that the ability to pass on property to one’s progeny is an essential element of capitalism, without which the capitalists’ incentives will dry up and the system will lose its dynamism.
India’s move toward a de facto unitary state
India is being pushed toward a de facto unitary state, with states being kept totally out of the loop in decision-making, as seen in the new agricultural laws, goods and services tax compensation, Jammu and Kashmir bifurcation and new National Education Policy.
How India’s Modi is changing laws to help imperialists dominate the country’s agriculture
The fact that the Center made unilateral and fundamental changes in agricultural marketing arrangements that fall within the State List of the Seventh Schedule of the Constitution was a blow against federalism.
Billionaires and the Pandemic
WEALTH distribution data are notoriously difficult to interpret. This is because variations in stock prices affect wealth distribution, so that a stock market boom suddenly makes the rich appear much richer, while a stock market collapse makes wealth distribution less unequal overnight.
One hundred years of Indian communism
The economic programme suggested for such a front included the right to strike, banning reductions of wages and dismissals of workers, an adequate minimum wage and 8-hour day, a 50 per cent reduction in rents and banning the seizure of peasant land against debt by imperialists, native princes, zamindars and money lenders.
Why Modi’s government is not up to the task
The Modi regime believes that no matter how impoverished the people are their electoral support can always be won by promoting Hindutva and effecting a communal polarization. It is an utterly cynical view, but then, the present dispensation represents the acme of cynicism.
The protracted crisis of capitalism
THERE is a commonly-held view that the current crisis in capitalism, which has resulted in a massive output contraction and increase in unemployment, is because of the pandemic; and that once the pandemic gets over, things will go back to “normal”.
Lebanese portents
Its two major sources of foreign exchange, tourism and remittances from the Gulf and elsewhere, have virtually dried up owing to the pandemic, causing its currency to depreciate massively, its external debt to be impossible to service, and its ability to import essential commodities which are the lifeline of the population to be severely curtailed.
Detainees during the Pandemic
It is a common practice all over the world that when those incarcerated face a threat to life, the authorities send them home.
Decline in global poverty is a farce perpetuated by World Bank’s poverty line
The real problem with the World Bank’s poverty estimates, is that its International Poverty Line is set at an impossibly low level, which greatly underestimates world poverty.
India’s abysmal healthcare system
DD Kosambi uses a telling example to illustrate the crisis of Indian feudalism: at the third Battle of Panipat in 1761, the troops on oneside had not had enough to eat, while the troops on the other side just managed to assuage hunger by looting villages in the neighbourhood; neither side in short had arranged […]
A stock market boom amidst a real economy crisis
Altogether, as philosopher Cornel West put it, the U.S. is showing every sign of being a “failed social experiment”. And yet there is a veritable boom in the U.S. stock market. The stock market index Nasdaq has increased by more than 40 per cent since March 23 and is now “within striking distance of all […]
Imperialism and India’s food economy
The problem before metropolitan capitalism therefore is: how to acquire control over the use of this tropical land-mass in order to obtain the products it needs?
The problem of external debt
There is a massive problem of external debt building up for the third world, of which the recent Argentine debt crisis was only one manifestation. At the root of the problem is the collapse of primary commodity prices in the world market which began in April 2011.
The World at crossroads
Radical reforms in reversing the prevailing policy direction of the last four decades will need to be put on the table. Governments will have to accept a more active role in the economy. They must see public services as investment rather than as liabilities and look for ways to make the labour market less insecure. […]
The war on Labour
The war on labour is a continuation of the attacks which the BJP has been launching on the religious minorities and dalits; its economic consequences will be disastrous.
