There has been much publicity about the so-called “currency war” arising from the discussions at the recent G20 meeting. Can you explain what is meant by currency war? The discourse, the rhetoric, on the currency war is very superficial and even misleading. As everybody knows, what is being said is that the Chinese yuan is […]
Geography Archives: India
Squeezing Iran: The European Connection
Negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program are due to start again shortly, and once again the European Union is called upon as a “mediator.” This is no minor challenge. With Iran insisting on discussing Israel’s nuclear capacity and the United States preparing a tougher uranium swap agreement, a deal seems as far away as ever. Nevertheless, […]
Noam Chomsky on Hopes and Prospects for Activism: “We Can Achieve a Lot”
Acclaimed philosopher and activist Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He shared his perspectives on international affairs, economics, and other themes in an interview conducted at his office in Boston on September 14, 2010. Keane Bhatt: Your new book Hopes and Prospects begins with the story of […]
A Goldfish with Glasses
He must think workers are stupid. How else can anyone explain it? He says, if UAW members lower the automakers’ fixed costs by cutting wages and benefits and trimming work rules to the bone — as in less break time and a jack-of-all-trades paradigm — it will help the union organize. It’s crazy. It’s straight […]
From Field to Fork: Obama’s Agri Recipe for India
The government of the USA has planned for India to become an important consumer of its agricultural exports and crop science. India has also been planned as a host country for an agricultural research agenda directed by American crop-seed biotech corporations. This is to be achieved through a variety of programmes in India, some of […]
Dilma’s Victory in Brazil
Like the rally led by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert of Comedy Central that brought hundreds of thousands of people into the streets of Washington DC on Saturday, Brazil’s election on Sunday was a contest of “Restore Sanity” versus “Keep Fear Alive.” Dilma Rousseff of the governing Worker’s Party coasted to victory against the opposition […]
The Currency War
Everyone is talking now of the “currency war” that seems to be breaking out among the world’s leading economies, each working for a depreciation of its currency vis-à-vis the others. The effect of a currency depreciation is to enlarge the exports of the country undertaking such a depreciation and to reduce its imports, since its […]
Pity the Nation
Kashmir, Oct. 26 — I write this from Srinagar, Kashmir. This morning’s papers say that I may be arrested on charges of sedition for what I have said at recent public meetings on Kashmir. I said what millions of people here say every day. I said what I, as well as other commentators, have written […]
Economics, Ideology, and Imperialism
Prof. Prabhat Patnaik, eminent Marxist economist, taught in CESP-JNU (Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University) over the last four decades. He has been one of the most outstanding economists in India and a great teacher. He has retired from JNU recently. On the occasion of his farewell, the students of CESP […]
G20: The United States and Neo-mercantilism
Here comes the travail of crisis. The more they talk about coordination, the more it becomes necessary to concentrate on the conflicts revealed by the very talk of coordination. The G20 finance ministers’ meeting, held in South Korea on Friday, has already been mortgaged by the case opened by US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner regarding […]
The Paradox of Capitalism
John Maynard Keynes, though bourgeois in his outlook, was a remarkably insightful economist, whose book Economic Consequences of the Peace was copiously quoted by Lenin at the Second Congress of the Communist International to argue that conditions had ripened for the world revolution. But even Keynes’ insights could not fully comprehend the paradox that is […]
Rally to End Two-Tier Wages: Auto Workers Protest UAW
“Two hundred auto workers picketed October 16 outside the locked gates of their union’s headquarters in Detroit, protesting an agreement to let General Motors pay half wages at a suburban assembly plant. The ‘Tier 2’ workers, who make up 40 percent of employees at the plant, will make roughly $14.50. They’ll be working alongside Tier […]
Playing the Currency Blame Game
The slanging match over currency and monetary policies at the annual Fund-Bank meetings, held over the second weekend of October, points to the disarray in global economic governance. While the US sought to mobilise IMF support for an effort to realign exchange rates and ensure an appreciation of the renminbi in the wake of China’s […]
Brazil Should Lead on Access to Essential Medicines
By the greater use of compulsory licenses, Brazil could lower drug costs not only in Brazil, but in developing countries overall. At a time when the New York Times is reporting that “the global battle against AIDS is falling apart for lack of money,” it is absolutely essential that the price of lifesaving medicines in […]
Iran’s “Soft Power” Increasingly Checks U.S. Power
October 13, 2010 Twenty years ago, Harvard’s Joseph Nye famously coined the term “soft power” to describe what he saw as an increasingly important factor in international politics — the capacity of “getting others to want what you want,” which he contrasted with the ability to coerce others through the exercise of “hard” military and/or […]
What Does Wage-led Growth Mean in Developing Countries with Large Informal Employment?
The past decade has been one in which export-led economic strategies have come to be seen as the most successful, driven by the apparent success of two countries in particular — China and Germany. In fact, the export-driven model of growth has much wider prevalence as it was adopted by almost all developing countries. This […]
Riding Capitalism to the Bottom: Why Republicans Gain as the Economy Falters
Overlooked in the recent rise of the Tea Party and the Republican Right is the way these groups have learned how to grow and thrive on the failures of capitalism. The Democrats, in contrast, remain tied to its successes. With capitalism performing particularly poorly at present, it is no wonder that the Right is […]
On the Allahabad High Court Verdict
There are three obvious problems with the Allahabad High Court judgment on the Babri Masjid issue. Each of them in isolation is potentially damaging for the Constitutional fabric of the country; together they can cause irreparable harm. The first is the obliteration of the distinction between “fact” and “faith”, which represents a serious retrogression to […]
A Note on the Current Political Situation: Some Issues and a Conclusion
The opening section of this note dealing with the most important issue in the current political situation—’the Maoist’ or the Naxal issue—sets the context for the argument that follows, which deals with issues involved in understanding and acting in this situation. I reproduce some key passages, marginally modified and compressed in one case, from my […]
Iran and Honduras in the Propaganda System: Part 1, Neda Agha-Soltan versus Isis Obed Murillo
It would be hard to find a better test of the integrity of the establishment U.S. media than in their comparative treatment of Iran and Honduras over the past couple of years (2009-2010). Iran has been on the United States’ regime-change hit list for many years. Since the first-half of 2003 (and overlapping its soon-to-be-discredited […]
