Hardly the Brick and Mortar of a Revival
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Hardly the Brick and Mortar of a Revival

There is no longer any room for doubt on the parlous state of the Indian economy. The automobile industry, seen as a bellwether of activity in the post-liberalisation years, is in crisis, as automakers, parts manufacturers and dealers have laid off about 350,000 workers since April this year, with more job cuts likely. While this…

Goodbye Citizenship, Hello ‘Statizenship’
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Goodbye Citizenship, Hello ‘Statizenship’

The age of citizenship is nearing its close. The idea of citizenship was linked, in its Latin derivation, to the city (civitas), civility (civilis) and to other related words which implied urbanity, civic norms and hospitality. In the age of liberal democracy, born from the constitutions of France and the United States in the late…

Gandhian Model of Economy and the Post Globalisation Scenario
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Gandhian Model of Economy and the Post Globalisation Scenario

On 20th August, 2019 Indian Express e-paper carried an unusual advertisement by the Northern India Textiles Mills Association about Indian Spinning Industry facing a huge crisis. The spinning mills are incurring huge loses, they are not in a position to buy Indian cotton, livelihood of 10 crores people, directly or indirectly, dependent on textile industry…

This Climate Strike Is Part of the Disruption We Need
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This Climate Strike Is Part of the Disruption We Need

Business as usual is what’s doing us in. We live on a planet that finds itself rather suddenly in the midst of an enormous physical crisis. Because we burn so much coal and gas and oil, the atmosphere of our world is changing rapidly, and that atmospheric change is producing record heat. July was the…

Activist Medha Patkar Ends Hunger Strike After 9 Days

Activist Medha Patkar Ends Hunger Strike After 9 Days

Narmada Bachao Andolan leader Medha Patkar ended her fast on the ninth day on September 2 night after receiving assurances from the Madhya Pradesh government about steps being taken to meet her demands. Patkar’s health had deteriorated by the eighth day of her indefinite hunger strike to demand rehabilitation of thousands of people displaced by…

‘Nationalist’ BJP Govt Invites Foreign Takeover, Offers Cheap Indian Labour!
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‘Nationalist’ BJP Govt Invites Foreign Takeover, Offers Cheap Indian Labour!

It is ironical that the Narendra Modi government, which never tires of reminding everybody about their nationalism and patriotism, is actually following an economic policy of selling off the country’s national resources to foreign companies. It recently announced measures of easing foreign direct investment (FDI) in coal mining and associated infrastructure, contract manufacturing, single brand…

We Are Facing a Global Emergency in the Amazon
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We Are Facing a Global Emergency in the Amazon

(Condensed by us from articles by Leila Salazar-López, Lindsey Allen in Common Dreams, and Peter Koenig in Countercurrents.org.) Called “the lungs of the Earth”, the Amazon rainforest and its lush trees make roughly 20% of the oxygen on Earth. But the Amazon is presently on fire. In the about 20 days since they were discovered,…

Top 1% up $21 Trillion. Bottom 50% down $900 Billion.
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Top 1% up $21 Trillion. Bottom 50% down $900 Billion.

  Recently, the Federal Reserve of the USA released a new data series called the Distributive Financial Accounts, which provide quarterly estimates of the distribution of wealth in America. The series goes back to 1989, and runs to the fourth quarter of 2018. The insights of this new data series are many, but for this…