The Indian state today seems to proclaim that everything in the country is in danger–whether it is religion, culture, communal harmony or public peace and tranquillity.

An invoice for advance payment of $45 million raised by the offshore partner of Bharat Biotech is certain to become the reason for the impending cancellation of the contract.

The signatories, including Noam Chomsky and Olga Tokarczuk, sought that the temporary order to release prisoners in light of COVID-19 be applied to these political prisoners as well.

Akin to how characters in Dante’s poem paid for their sins in hell, Indians are paying with their lives during a pandemic for electing a government that is utterly incompetent and bigoted.

His stance on free press stands in sharp contrast to the status of the press–being totally subservient to the state–in the communist countries of the 20th century.

In India, doctors recently had to issue a warning against the practice of using cow dung in the belief it will ward off COVID-19, saying there is no scientific evidence for its effectiveness and that it risks spreading other diseases.

With an unprecedented volume of dead bodies, Brahmins and workers from other castes are working side by side in the crematoriums of Delhi. But caste defines every choice made among the pyres.

The privatisation model pursued by successive governments, in health to education, has led to the perpetuation of class and caste divides, with the poor often left to suffer.

‘Another, probably more severe pandemic has been predicted. Scientists know how to prepare, but someone must act. If we choose not to learn the lessons that are right before our eyes, the consequences will be dire.”

‘I believe that they have done no wrong because there is widespread hunger [amidst the lockdown] and people are helpless.’

Two hundred years on, the questions he asked of the world in the 19th century have not lost their relevance or sharpness.

In an interview with The Wire, the well-known Marxist scholar talks about the surge of populist and right-wing politics and the future of neoliberalism, capitalism and technology.

On September 14, it will be exactly 150 years since the publication of Capital: Critique of Political Economy, the first volume of Karl Marx’s epochal Das Kapital. The historicity of the book can be gauged by the fact that this first of three bulky tomes was published by a Hamburg publisher two years after the American Civil War but well above a decade before the incandescent bulb was invented. Capital however, literally acted as the bulb that shone a light on many a way.

I think Marxism analyses the contemporary world in a way which nobody else did. Lenin had said the strength of Marxism lies in the fact that it is true. The point is that it is a genuine scientific discovery.