According to a report in the Times of India (November 23), the United States has asked European countries to restrict immigration in order to preserve “Western Civilization.” Many in the Third World would find the term “Western Civilization” laughable, especially if it is used in the sense of denoting something precious and worth preserving. The atrocities […]

It may be thought that just as any tendency towards a financial outflow causes a squeeze on the living conditions of the working people via an exchange rate depreciation, any opposite tendency, towards an inflow of finance (in excess of the autonomously determined current account deficit in any period) should have the opposite effect of appreciating the exchange rate and hence lowering the cost of living, to the benefit of the working masses.

The point here is not to criticise the GST rate cut as such; but to underscore the fact that any such rate cut, must be accompanied by an equivalent increase in resource mobilization at the expense of the rich, a matter that is squarely within the domain of the central government.

All sorts of threats are being invoked to justify this step up in militarisation, especially a Russian threat.

This continuous tendency towards a rise in income inequality arises from the fact that, owing to the mobility of capital across country borders, wages across the entire world have to suffer the baneful consequences of the massive third world labour reserves; and the relative size of these reserves does not diminish despite such relocation of capital from the Global North.

ON October 11 in New Delhi Prime Minister Narendra Modi advised Indian farmers to grow more “export-oriented crops”.

Unless there is going beyond neo-liberalism, which is necessary for overcoming the crisis it has caused, even a political defeat of the fascistic elements in elections, will only cause a temporary setback to them; they will come back to power again, as Donald Trump has done in the U.S., because the conjuncture that gave rise to their ascent would not have been overcome.

This dead-end has to be located in a historical context.

The adjustment in the Goods and Services Tax rates that has just been announced to take effect from September 22, does not as such inject any purchasing power into the economy.

Not being characterised by involuntary unemployment was a great achievement of old socialism. It was an achievement unprecedented in modern history and it still remains unsurpassed to this day.

Donald Trump’s tariffs however serve a broader objective: they are like a military intervention, or a coup d’etat or a terrorist attack, to make nations bend to his will. Indian garment exporters for instance are being hit by 50 per cent tariffs not for the protection of any American garment producers but to make India bend to Trump’s will.

The vision of a capitalism that is “stabilised” through a rectification of its “excesses”, and hence pre-empts any social challenge to its existence, has always endured in one form or another among economists.

Calling this concession a Diwali “gift” of course betrays a repugnant feudal mindset.

Tariffs raise the prices of imported goods in the domestic market relative to money wages, which is what makes possible, at least in part, the replacement of such imports by domestically-produced goods. Tariffs do not of course lead to all imports being eliminated, but some clearly are.

IT is ironical that on the 78th anniversary of the victory of the Indian people’s struggle against British imperialism, U.S. imperialism is openly bullying India into obeying its diktat.

Against Trump’s threat to raise tariffs against imports from China, the Chinese government announced a temporary moratorium on the export of certain rare earth elements to the U.S.

THE World Bank has recently published a list of Gini coefficients for 61 countries relating in some cases to income distribution and in others to consumption expenditure distribution.

Donald Trump’s “big beautiful bill” which got passed by both houses in the U.S. and has now become law, is a massive assault on welfare spending.

It is very important to distinguish between the Left criticism and the neoliberal criticism of the dirigiste strategy.

When Bertolt Brecht wrote: “Hungry man; reach for the book” he was articulating the Left attitude to education, as something that broadens perceptions and hence is essentially emancipatory. The fascist attitude to education is diametrically opposite to this.