One should scarcely be surprised therefore by the fact that the western media have been so critical of the Modi government for its climbdown.

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 period of neo-liberalism witnesses an increase in the share of economic surplus in total output both in individual countries and also for the world as a whole.

MARXIST theory develops with changing times, as capitalism itself develops, which is why it remains a living doctrine. On the question of the role of the peasantry in the revolutionary process that leads to the transcendence of capitalism, there have been significant developments in Marxist theory, which I propose to discuss here.

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.

There is a tendency in the West, including even among progressives, to treat all “nationalism” as a homogeneous and reactionary category. They treat even anti-colonial nationalism as if it is no different from European bourgeois nationalism, notwithstanding the several crucial differences between the two.

But the United States government is not alone here. It has several close allies, such as Canada, which is the home to 60 per cent of the world’s mining companies. Canada’s great interest in what lies beneath the soil of the Americas allows it to treat those who live above that soil with the greatest disdain.

If the U.S. wants to be a world leader, it has to match China in investing in knowledge generation for future technology. Why then is the U.S. taking the sanctions route? Sanctions are simpler to implement; building a society that values knowledge is much more difficult. This is the crisis of late capitalism.

Just as a household cannot “live beyond its means” forever, and sooner or later its creditors not only stop giving loans but take away the assets of the household for defaulting on loan repayment, likewise, the State cannot “live beyond its means” forever and go on borrowing ad infinitum; sooner or later its creditors stop giving loans and even attach its assets.

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.

Georgi Dimitrov, president of the Communist International, had, at its Seventh Congress, characterised a fascist State as the “open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary section of finance capital”

In Keynes’ words: “It is not the ownership of the instruments of production which it is important for the State to assume. If the State is able to determine the aggregate amount of resources devoted to augmenting the instruments, and the basic rate of reward to those who own them, it will have accomplished all that is necessary.”

The G-7 meeting that has just concluded has promised to donate one billion doses of anti-Covid vaccine to the rest of the world, consisting primarily of the so-called “developing” countries.

Ever since the outbreak of the pandemic, first recorded in India end January 2020, this Modi government’s preoccupation had never been on combating the pandemic in right earnest and saving people’s lives but on continuing to relentlessly pursue the unfolding of the RSS project.

ON March 24, 2020, Narendra Modi had announced that the country would go into a lockdown after four hours! This nation-wide lockdown was to last till the end of May, after which there were local lockdowns but not a general one.

ON October 2, 2020, even before any vaccines against COVID-19 had been approved, India and South Africa had proposed to the WTO that a temporary patent waiver should be granted on all such innovations.

U.S. President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion rescue package is one of the most ambitious measures to revive the U.S. and, with it, the world economy.

IN the week before the historic nationwide farmers’ struggle completed three months on February 26, the BJP has begun to pay a heavy political price for its pro-corporate adamancy.