October 18, 2008

While the global financial crisis continues unabated despite fire-fighting by major players on the international scene, the IMF has slashed growth projections for the world economy with a sombre warning: “It is now entering a major downturn in the face of the most dangerous shock in mature financial markets since the 1930s.”
Although spared for the present the extreme consequences of the crisis, India too is feeling the heat—FIIs are pulling out and the Sensex lost 2000 points in one (…)

Dear Sir,
As academics who have studied the socio-economic conditions of modern Orissa and who have been extremely pained by the recent outbreak and persistence of violence in Kandhamal we present the following suggestions which we believe are practical and well within the capacity of the Central Government to undertake. The State Government can be called upon to cooperate in implementing these measures.
I. Immediate Steps for providing Security for Life and Property
1. Adequate CRPF (…)

The last few decades have witnessed vast changes in political ideology and economic policies across the world. People of different countries have been affected differently but always in a significant manner everywhere. Goa has achieved remarkable progress since independence. The greatest gain of independence, however, has been the feeling of self-respect regained, of liberation, the opening of the portals of opportunity particularly to the vast mass of people who were denied upward (…)

This Constitution of India must be scrapped. It is designed to maintain status quo ante and substantially it is only an adaptation of the Government of India Act, 1935. It has failed to give any impetus to national integration; on the contrary, it has divided the people, it has encour-aged corruption instead of rooting it out. It has helped criminalisation of the administrative and political system of the country. It has dismally failed to establish real parliamentary democracy. It has (…)

If one wants to understand the real nature of the ongoing globalisation, based on the Washington Consensus and its impending fate, one needs to turn to Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation, published in 1944. Polanyi’s formulations are more relevant now than ever before. Fred Block of the University of California is quite correct when he states that even after many decades, The Great Transformation remains fresh. Indeed, it is indispensable for understanding the dilemma facing global (…)

The following article, being carried in two parts, is based on the author’s remarks at the conference “Human Security and Reconciliation” organised by the European Centre for Peace and Development (ECPD), Belgrade, October 27-28, 2006. The article was first published in Inter-Ethnic Reconciliation, Religious Tolerance and Human Security in the Balkans, Proceedings of the Second ECPD International Conference, (eds.) T. Togo, J. Levett, N.P. Ostojic, Belgrade, 2007. It is being published here (…)

The improper resettlement and rehabilitation package for 2500 agricultural households of Singur owning 164 hectares (400 acres) of rich multicrop land forcibly acquired by the Buddhadeb Bhattacharya Government for the Nano car project would surely lead to their loss of livelihood, starvation, morbidity, social and economic degradation, not to forget a high incidence of untimely deaths.
This is the substance of a fact-sheet prepared by D. Bandyopadhyay, West Bengal’s former Land Reforms (…)

After the smart management of the Parliament debate on the JPC Report, which was neatly turned into a panegyric session for Manmohan Singh, raising the suspicion that his resignation offer was really a stunt calculated to pre-empt attacks in Parliament on him and his Ministry for their supreme laissez faire on the scam, one would have expected that there would be some effort on the government’s part to wake up and save the country from the seamy side of its free-market policy. It appears, (…)