2025

February4, 2025
Finance Minister Ms. Nirmala Sitharaman presented the Union Budget for the year 2025-26 a few days ago. Not being an economist, my focus is largely on the political aspects which surrounded budget making.
At the very outset, I like to submit that the presentation of the budget should not have been on 1st February , but, on or after 3rd February, as it was not proper to do so when campaigning for the Delhi Assembly elections were very much on. Well, some might say that (…)

Handloom weaving is a major employer after agriculture in India. It is spatially integrated with the diverse regional political economies and sociologically heterogeneous as caste- communities numerous and as diverse as backward castes, minorities like the Muslims, Dalits and Adivasis are engaged in handloom production for their livelihood.
The handloom weaving has historically been highly a decentralised sector spread over across the length and bread of the country and been known for (…)

Manipur, one of the seven states in India

While outrightly opposing the hard-line Hindutva of the RSS/BJP, scholars of the secular camp refer to the soft Hindutva of secular parties, as if the use of soft Hindutva to grab political power is a constitutional secular practice. They, without hesitation, place their bets on the soft Hindutva political parties/leaders who, in their view, can prevent the hard-line Hindutva RSS/BJP from coming into power in the elections. It seems not to matter even if that party/leader is a part of the (…)

In 2017 the Electoral Bond Scheme was introduced. In the name of making funding of political parties transparent, the information of purchaser of electoral bond and the political party it was donated to was made opaque even to the Election Commission of India. ECI objected to the possible influencing of policy making by unchecked foreign funding. But it took Supreme Court eight years to strike down the EBS, holding it unconstitutional. Even then it did not seize the illegally accumulated (…)

Eric Hobswam famously stated that History is as important to (sectarianism) Nationalism as poppy is to an opium addict. The right-wing is surging with great speed; its ideologues keep a matching pace to construct the history which suits their political agenda of exclusion of some and glorification of their past. In this direction, medieval Indian history was the major one to be mauled by showing particularly that the medieval period of Indian history was an era of Islamic Imperialism and by (…)

Tapan Bose (8 June 1946

Serbia has been shaken in recent months by student-led protests. What began as an isolated demonstration to honour the dead and demand accountability after a railway station canopy collapsed in Novi Sad has quickly evolved into a mass movement that is presenting Aleksandar Vucic with his most severe test yet.
In late 2024, students in Serbia initiated a wave of protests, leading to the occupation of university buildings, the blockade of schools, and demonstrations in cities across the (…)

Abstract: With the 2024 US election came to an end, the global community must brace for potential shifts in American foreign policy particularly under a second Donald Trump Presidency. Trump