India’s oldest Socialist Weekly!
Editor: Dr. G.G. Parikh | Associate Editor: Neeraj Jain | Managing Editor: Guddi
States’ access to resources is seemingly conditional on having a “double-engine sarkar”, even as governments’ space for economic policy is shrinking.
In a turnaround, the IMF has now granted Pakistan a larger-than expected, nine-month, short-term loan package of $3 billion. This is independent of the earlier IMF-supported program.
A number of State governments are announcing or implementing decisions to reverse their shift to the new pension scheme designed largely by the Centre. The Centre has launched a propaganda war to discredit this decision against the new scheme.
IMF’s solution for Lankan debt crisis could be a case of the cure being worse than the disease.
Successive governments with a neoliberal agenda have not been able to roll-back nationalization, even after thirty years. That fortuitous ‘failure’ shows that the criticism of public ownership of banking is misplaced, and that neoliberal policies have lost their legitimacy.
The recent and rapid depreciation of the rupee vis-à-vis the dollar does give cause for concern. The drivers of the depreciation are not all short term. If the depreciation persists, it may attract the attention of speculators who will resort to measures that accelerate the currency’s decline.
The State Bank of India recently announced that it had entered into a partnership with Adani Capital. Like with all public-private partnerships under capitalism, the public sector will bear the risk while the private sector will share the rewards generated largely by the investment of public capital.
The near relentless bull run on India’s stock markets seems to be faltering, with signs of a descent from recent peaks. While short-term international and domestic developments are blamed for that reticence, there is a more serious fear keeping policy makers and central bankers awake.
Camouflaged in jargon that speaks of ‘monetisation of de-risked assets’, the BJP-led NDA government has announced a plan to sell off India’s public sector assets to big private investors in return for payments of around Rs 6 lakh crore over a four year period ending financial year 2025.
The Department of Consumer Affairs has called for comments on an amended version of the Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules, 2020. While the intent here seems to be to protect privacy and prevent unfair competition, another objective seems to be surveillance.
Janata Weekly is India’s oldest independent socialist weekly.
Ever since its founding in 1946, Janata has voiced its principled dissent against all conduct and practice that is detrimental to the cherished values of nationalism, democracy, secularism and socialism, while upholding the integrity and the ethical norms of healthy journalism. For more than seventy years now, week after week, it has continued to analyse the changes taking place in the country and the world from a socialist standpoint, and thus promote the spread of socialist ideology in the country.
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