Geography Archives: India

Education in post-independence India was supposed not just to provide knowledge and skills to students, but also to facilitate the process of “nation-building” (to use a clumsy word).

THE Modi government’s attempt to “explain” away India’s slipping from being 94th on the world hunger index in 2020 to 101st in 2021, a rank well below that of neighbours Pakistan, Nepal or Bangladesh, by questioning the “methodology” of the index, is jejune enough; but even more shocking is its total inability to see the reason behind the acute hunger in the country.

The health of the 70-year-old activist has deteriorated following the move. Prison authorities are now denying the family and his lawyer phone calls with him on the pretext that inmates can now be met in jail physically.

Any Indian would know that powerful narratives envelop India’s deeply troubled relationships with Pakistan and China. The dominant narratives have become the means through which successive governments strove to assert values and identities.

The landslide victory of the Left Democratic Front (LDF) in the Indian state of Kerala in April 2021 is a historic achievement.

The current situation might present an opportunity to strengthen mass movements and to steer the focus towards the rights and livelihoods of women and workers. The ongoing Indian farmers’ movement, which started before the pandemic and continues to stay strong, offers the opportunity to steer the national discourse towards such an agenda.

On Wednesday, 8 September, party workers of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), India’s ruling political party, attacked three buildings in the Melarmath area of Agartala (Tripura). These attacks targeted the offices of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the communist newspaper Daily Deshar Katha, and two private media houses Pratibadi Kalam and PN-24.

Considering the dialectic between force and consent, political society and civil society, it becomes clear that the CPI (M) in Tripura is engaged in a popular-democratic struggle aimed at the construction of the broad-based hegemony of progressive forces.

The conception of the present as history crystallized into an important principle of the intellectual tradition of Monthly Review magazine. Viewing the present as history entails combining what is new with a grasp of the longer process that is vital to a deeper understanding of the present. This Introduction provides an initiation to the intellectual tradition of Monthly Review, from which we have selected the essays and the interview that appear in The Present as History 2021.

EVERYWHERE in the world people got vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus without having to pay a penny, but not in India. Everywhere in the world, historic landmarks that define a nation, that constitute the warp and woof of a nation’s consciousness, are held sacred and left untouched in their original shape, but not in India.

New platforms and data analytics are helping big agribusiness take over Indian agriculture. Ordinary farmers are losing out, writes Bikrum Gill.

From Ajmer to Indore, recent incidents show that the continuing hate-mongering by right-wing forces is having a direct impact.

While our government wants us to step back and forget what we know about the violence of Britain’s imperial state, Richard Gott says it’s time for a much deeper reckoning.

The U.S. has degenerated to such an extent that is probably one of the least democratic countries in the world. It is ruled by an extremely powerful and undemocratic billionaire class, buttressed by an entrenched bureaucracy and intelligence apparatus, and legitimized by an obsequious media which does not even pretend to be neutral.

The perfect storm of COVID-19 and climate change, and the resulting economic damage, will most likely trigger much more social and political instability. Although substantially increased international cooperation can still avert this nightmarish scenario, the current state of global politics provides few grounds for optimism.

ON July 19, 1969, 14 major banks were nationalised in the country. Today, after 52 years there is some talk again of privatising the nationalised banks, which naturally raises the question: why were banks nationalised at all?

Many would remember that the Soviet Union and other Eastern European socialist countries used to be characterized by long queues of consumers for several commodities.

A blot on the nation.

Umberto Eco’s inventory of proto-fascist characteristics comprised 14 elements. It will not be difficult for us to recognise the variant of many of these in Narendra Modi’s New India.

Sebastian, in his writings in The Fight to Win Rights, is direct, and honest, unafraid to state unpalatable facts. Blunt and matter-of-fact, his words seem to be deliberately chosen to appeal to the conscience of people, his mode of expression reflecting his commitment to justice and the truth.