2021

Summary:
‘West Bengal Dalit Sahitya Academy’ under ‘Information and Broadcast Department’ of West Bengal government was recently set up. In the domain of progressive Bengali literature always repudiated the Dalit reality and literary culture. After four decades of struggle in West Bengal, Bengali Dalit literature has finally received official recognition of the Government. The first meeting of the Academy successfully showcased its own alternative literature which has been reported in this (…)

We thought we were done With wars, famine and the plague, When something so vague, Without so much as a look Simply overtook, our lives. A couple started walking with bundles of clothes, Their sleeping child atop a trundling suitcase; They left in haste, At a frantic pace; For home. They were not alone; Thousands left Walking the road for miles, With no food, no water; Gnashed teeth – a smile. Beaten callously by the police on the way, Some reached, a few fell to the sway Of time; The (…)

by Martha Rosenberg *
By now, most people are aware of the US obesity statistics. In 2016, almost 70 percent of US adults were obese of overweight says the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). That means normal sized people are in the minority. (Some are even considered "anorexics.")
Today, the average American man weighs almost 198 pounds up from 166 pounds in the 1960s and the average American woman weighs 170 pounds up from 140 pounds in the 1960s. (The trend brings (…)

The International Karl Polanyi Society (IKPS)

* How Much of a Democracy is India, Really? | P B Sawant
* Governorship Is Boring - Power Matters | TJS George
* Twenty 20, A Dangerous Trend from Kerala| Sukumaran C V

Letter to the Readers – Mainstream, Jan 2, 2021
Once again we have crossed the doorstep of a new year. The year that we leave behind was one with a difference. Since the time I was born in the mid-1940s, I have never experienced a year of such a grave pandemic as this year, 2020, that took a toll of so many lives. What will the new year, 2021, bring to us? Hope or catastrophe? That is the moot question today. The present does not hold any positive reply although we still hope for the best (…)

Abraham Lincoln defined Democratic Government as a government of, for and by the people. This definition was true to the spirit of the origin of democracy in the ancient Greek city states, where all males above 18 years were participating in the day to day affairs of the government. The essence of democracy is the participation of the people in the day to day affairs of the state. Mere elections are not democracy. The elections become necessary when on account of large populations people (…)

IMPRESSIONS Arif Mohammed Khan must be the most frustrated politician in India today. He has been made governor when his own conviction is that he can serve the country best by being a power-wielding minister. He is taking out his frustration on the elected government in Kerala, the state he is ‘governing.’ He seems convinced that he as governor has a political role to play as much as the ministers of the state. Result: An ugly situation that has been saved from becoming a public (…)

Kerala may perhaps be the most political state in India. But in the recently concluded local body elections, the people of four panchayats in Ernakulam district of the state proved that Kerala can dangerously be apolitical too. Kitex Garments, the company that pollutes the surrounding water bodies and paddyfields in Kizhakkambalam Panchayat was denied licence by the panchayat governing body 8 years ago. Then, the Kitex Garments-Anna Aluminium group CEO Mr. Sabu Jacob, in accordance with the (…)

Synopsis
It is, of course, right to make space for regulation in the trade area. The idea that unregulated markets serve the public interest, quite flawed in general, is also odd in the case of agricultural marketing. Unregulated agricultural markets often raise problems related to uncertainty, equity, collusion, quality control, asymmetric information, economies of scale, contract enforcement and abuse of non- economic power, among other possible sources of so-called ‘market failure’. (…)