2023

BRIHANMUMBAI UNION OF JOURNALISTS 23-25 Prospect Chambers Annexe, Fort, Mumbai 400 001 Email: bujmedia[at]gmail.com
07.02.2023
BUJ condemns killing of journalist Shashikant Warishe; demands arrest of killers
The Brihanmumbai Union of Journalists is shocked at the brazen broad daylight murder of journalist Shashikant Warishe, by a local land dealer Pandarinath Amberkar, off the Rajapur highway on Monday, February 6, 2023.
Anberkar allegedly mowed down Warishe and dragged him under (…)

Review Joydip Ghosal *
__0__ Being the Change: In the Footsteps of the Mahatma
by Ashutosh Salil, Barkha Mathur
HarperCollins India (23 September 2022) Paperback ‏ : ‎ 176 pages ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9356291985 ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-9356291980
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The only way to find God is to see Him in His creation and be one with it. This can only be done by service of all…..My countrymen are my nearest neighbours. They have become so helpless, so resourceless, so inert that I must concentrate myself on (…)

Reviewed by Ruth Carlitz (University of Amsterdam)
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Every Household Its Own Government: Improvised Infrastructure, Entrepreneurial Citizens, and the State in Nigeria by Daniel Jordan Smith
Princeton: Princeton University Press
2022. 232 pp. (e-book), ISBN 978-0-691-22991-1 (paper), ISBN 978-0-691-22989-8
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The Nigerian expression Daniel Jordan Smith employs as the main title of his insightful 2022 book, Every Household Its Own Government: Improvised Infrastructure, (…)

* Union Budget 2023-24 Fails to Live up to Expectations of People | Bharat Dogra
* Remembering VKRV Rao | KN Ninan
* In Defence of Student Politics | Soumodip Sinha
* On Happiness | Kobad Ghandy
* Lessons unlearned from India’s online schooling emergency | Dipanjan Chakraborty

Letter to the readers, Mainstream, Feb 4, 2023
The National Budget 2023-24 presented in Parliament this week had major cuts in key areas of social spending —employment, nutrition, health, education, and economic commitments towards the peasantry— triggering sharp disapproval from the social democratic opposition, the left, and from social movement groups. The process got overshadowed by news of a market meltdown of the share values of one of India’s biggest business conglomerates. In five (…)

The union budget for the year has been presented at a time of growing concerns that expectations regarding an inclusive recovery from the COVID and lockdown related economic crisis have not been realized for millions of poor households, while inequalities have been increasing sharply. There were therefore strong reasons for using this budget as an instrument for providing immediate relief to the bottom half of the population(which now has access to only 3 to 6% of the total wealth, according (…)

by P. S. Jayaramu
February 2, 2023
Finance Minister Ms. Nirmala Sitharaman presented her fifth budget in succession, her last budget before the Modi Government goes to polls in early 2024. Going by the priority and higher allocations made to the Prime Minister’s programmes, one gets the impression that it is more of a Prime minister’s budget, probably fine-tuned by the PMO, if not totally drafted by it ! The finance minister made repeated references during the course of her speech to the (…)

by Atul Sarma & Shyam Sunder *
Budget 2023-24 is expected to be prepared under the shadow of multiple challenges such as slowing global growth, elevated core inflation even with tamed energy and food prices, and looming recession in Europe and other advanced countries. At another level, this being the last full budget before the general election in 2024 has its own challenges to make it as voter friendly as possible.
The performance of the Indian economy in the immediate past would (…)

by K N Ninan *
The Institute for Social and Economic Change (ISEC), Bangalore founded by renowned economist and former Union Minister Dr V K R V Rao in 1972 completed its golden jubilee recently. This was the third institute founded by Dr Rao, the other two being the Delhi School of Economics (DSE) and Institute of Economic Growth (IEG) in Delhi. Professor Rao, the first to obtain a PhD in Economics from Cambridge University and recipient of the prestigious Adam Smith prize was a colossus (…)

by Soumodip Sinha *
The term student politics carries manifold conceptions. Student activists I have interacted with during the course of my doctoral fieldwork in Delhi University seek to avoid the category politics and prefer to use the term student activism. Such a phenomenon draws its roots from commonsensical notions about politics itself that has lent it a pejorative connotation with labels such as ‘dirty politics’ being commonplace. Typically, middle class households in India do not (…)