Private Players Line Up to Run Private Trains
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Private Players Line Up to Run Private Trains

Sabrangindia    After vehemently denying the entry of private players, the Indian Railways has proposed a plan to allow private players to run their trains on around 100 routes across the country, mostly for tourism purposes.   The proposal was also mentioned by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman while discussing the Budget 2020 where she said…

France: Striking Workers Continue the Fight Against Neoliberalism
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France: Striking Workers Continue the Fight Against Neoliberalism

Alan MacLeod   January 21, 2020: Nationwide protests against the government of Emanuel Macron entered their seventh continuous week today in France, as between 187,000 (a government estimate) and 250,000 people (the unions’ count) took to the streets to oppose Macron’s plans to radically alter the country’s pension plan, seen by many as the crown…

No Roadmap in Budget to Increase Farmers’ Income
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No Roadmap in Budget to Increase Farmers’ Income

Kabir Agarwal   While the broad consensus among economists was that the government needed to focus on putting money in the hands of those who are at the bottom of the pyramid, the 2020–21 budget has stayed away from making any such commitments.   The focus, in particular, had to be on providing a fillip…

Smokescreen of Numbers 
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Smokescreen of Numbers 

Jayati Ghosh   It’s finally time to call the bluff: the Union budget has become a completely meaningless—even misleading—exercise. Those of us who take either the pronouncements or the numbers mentioned on expected revenues and projected spending in the budget documents seriously are being made fools of. So we should stop wasting our time poring…

Budget 2020: Impose Wealth Tax and Inheritance Tax on the Rich to Finance Increase in Social Sector Expenditures 
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Budget 2020: Impose Wealth Tax and Inheritance Tax on the Rich to Finance Increase in Social Sector Expenditures 

    The budget for 2020 is due. We have argued in articles published in Janata that imposition of a progressive wealth tax ranging from 2% on India’s dollar millionaires to 5% on India’s dollar billionaires would yield at least Rs 8 lakh crore in additional income for the government. Additionally, imposition of a modest…

India’s Worsening Unemployment Crisis
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India’s Worsening Unemployment Crisis

Neeraj Jain   Soon after Modi-led BJP won the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the government felt emboldened to release the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) data, that it had suppressed. The data show that absolute employment in the country has actually fallen during the years of Modi’s prime ministership – the first time it has…

Economy in Shambles, But PM Asking Culprits for Solution!
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Economy in Shambles, But PM Asking Culprits for Solution!

Subodh Varma    In case you have been wondering why Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been so silent of late, not uttering a word about the CAA/NRC protests and police killings or the continuing horror in Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University or the stream of numbers showing how the economy is in shambles, here is the…

A Self-Made Fiscal Trap
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A Self-Made Fiscal Trap

C.P. Chandrasekhar   In the Revised Estimates for 2018–19 reported in Budget 2019, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government had hugely inflated figures on Central revenues and expenditures in 2018–19. This was one of many signals that it was faced with a fiscal crisis it did not want to reveal. Matters have only worsened since…

World’s 500 Richest People Gained $1.2 Trillion in Wealth in 2019
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World’s 500 Richest People Gained $1.2 Trillion in Wealth in 2019

Jake Johnson   The 500 richest people in the world, all of whom are billionaires, gained a combined $1.2 trillion in wealth in 2019, further exacerbating inequities that have not been seen since the late 1920s.   That’s according to a new Bloomberg analysis published last week, which found that the planet’s 500 richest people…

A Note on the Communist Manifesto
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A Note on the Communist Manifesto

Harry Magdoff   Probably the passage in the Communist Manifesto most frequently cited these days is a portrayal of the global spread of capitalism:   “All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all nations, by industries…