2021

* The CPI and Kanhaiya Kumar’s Departure | Ajayakumar Kodoth
* Gail Omvedt: The Legacy of an Activist Writer | Gabriele Dietrich
* Farmers’ Protest against the Farm Laws seen from West Bengal | Manabesh Sarkar
* The Politics of 15th Finance Commission Recommendations | Govind Bhattacharjee

Letter to the Readers, Mainstream, October 9, 2021
When the old Left used to speak the language of the capture of state power there was unease among democrats over fears of state capture where the ideological political goals of the ruling party could come to dictate state institutions. That fear has now come true in India over the past seven years, but it is the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that has taken control over much of the state machinery to further its agenda. The (…)

by Manabesh Sarkar*
Abstract: The farmers’ protest against the Farm Laws that began in June 2020 has been passing through a crucial time. In one hand, the central government has stopped short of taking any proactive role in resolving the issue, on the other hand, hardly any province other than Punjab, Haryana and West Uttar Pradesh are showing any indication of strong protest against the Farm Laws to create political pressure on the government. An analysis of data on the sale of (…)

by Dr Ajayakumar Kodoth
No young leader has succeeded in enthusing or attracting the youth in their anti-imperialist and anti-Fascist ideology and struggles in India quite as much as Kanhaiya Kumar has in recent times. Against the backdrop of the steady petering out of the Communist Party of India (CPI) in Indian politics in the past couple of decades, his entry into the national mainstream was evaluated as an unexpected political windfall for the party. It is an incontestable fact that (…)

The passing of Gail Omvedt on August 26, 2021 at her home in Kasegaon was received with great emotion by wide sections of women’s movements and Dalit movements. This is not surprising, because she was very well known not only as a prolific writer, but as an activist as well. The immediate circulation of pdf.s of her writings on Feminists India was a spontaneous reaction and led to a debate on copyrights and the survival problems of alternative publishing houses, which was long overdue. (…)

by Prabir K Patra*
A short congratulatory message to Syukuro Manabe, who has won the Nobel Prize in Physics on his work on development of the first general circulation model of the Earth’s atmosphere. He has shared one half of the prize with Klaus Hasselmann, who along with Syukuro, have enabled us “physical modelling of Earth’s Climate, quantifying variability and reliably predicting global warming.” The other half of the prize is awarded to Giorgio Parisi “for the discovery of the (…)

In his reading of Antonio Gramsci, the eminent Marxist historian, Eric Hobsbawm, argued that Gramsci was “par excellence the philosopher of political praxis”. (E J Hobsbawm, Introduction, David Forgacs (ed.), The Gramsci Reader: Selected Writings, 1916-35, New York University Press, 2000)
Gramsci’s philosophy of political praxis is embedded in his reading of Machiavelli’s seminal text, The Prince (See “The Modern Prince” in Antonio Gramsci: Selections from Prison Notebooks, Lawrence and (…)

IMPRESSIONS
What is happening in the Congress Party? The one-and-only Kanhaiya Kumar quits communist ranks and joins the Congress. Amarinder Singh, who led the Punjab government as though he was still the Maharajah of Patiala, finds himself summarily dismissed by a suddenly assertive Congress Party. Whereupon, without the slightest embarrassment, he drives into the residence of Amit Shah in search of new pastures.
The Indian politician may have many weaknesses. But a sense of shame (…)

by P. S. Jayaramu
(4th October, 2021)
The Congress Party continues to be in the news. And certainly not for good reasons. This time, it is attracting attention for the shocking and abrasive manner in which Capt. Amarinder Singh, a veteran leader of the Party was brought down recently from the post of Chief Minister of Punjab.
It is time to ask some frank questions like how and who took the decision about removing the Captain from the post of chief minister. Going by the reports in the (…)

by Govind Bhattacharjee*
The terms of reference (ToR) of the Fifteenth Finance Commission (FFC) had said it all, that the Centre should be more equal than the States, and that this was what it meant by cooperative federalism. The ToR was heavily skewed in favour of the Centre — and one could not be accused of prejudice to think that like in every other aspect of economic policies, here too the vote-bank politics might have played a part in suggesting an elaborate set of guidelines to the (…)