Max Ajl鈥檚 笔别辞辫濒别鈥檚 Green New Deal is a brutal reminder for the American left that even the most celebrated and progressive developments in American politics are still simply American politics, in other words they are a politics for America, and America first. Ajl situates both the longer history of environmental destruction and the response to it within a planetary frame without losing sight of geographical unevenness. The book is divided into two parts. The first part is where Ajl systematically debunks the American-centrism of the Cortez/Markey Green New Deal (GND). The second part is an imagination-widening exposition of an alternative 笔别辞辫濒别鈥檚 Green New Deal that centers the livelihood of the majority of the world鈥檚 people by putting forth an anti-imperial and anti-capitalist framework for a just transition.
The structure of anti-trust laws is generally and neatly divided into ex-post enforcement and ex-ante regulation of market conduct and its participants. It is a matter of social and economic policy choice as to whether any regulation should precede 鈥榟arm鈥� or follow it, as is the construction of 鈥榟arm鈥� across statutes. For example, the requirement of a means to understand and assess the market impact of a merger. On the other hand, abuse of dominant position is an ex-post assessment once the dominance has set in, which may be in the long run. The determination of abuse is subject to a rule of reason and analysis by the competition authorities. Against this background, the question is what happens in the intervening period when an undertaking is slowly and surely inching towards domination, engaging in conduct which would be punished only once it becomes dominant ? What happens to the process of concentration of markets, along with the practices in concentrated markets? These questions are not borne out of academic interest alone and are not completely answered by a simple focus on anti-competitive agreements, as will be seen below. The analysis will zoom in on the Indian market conditions to make a case for questioning the timing of regulatory intervention and proceed to show that new economic methods may be required in this task.
How is imperialism relevant today? How has it mutated over the past century? What are different theoretical and empirical angles through which we can study imperialism? These are the questions we deal with in our edited volume on (2018).
We understand imperialism as a continuing arrangement since the early years of empire-colonies to the prevailing pattern of expropriations, on part of those who wield power vis-脿-vis those who are weak. The pattern of 鈥榦ld imperialism鈥�, in the writings of Hobson, Hilferding and Lenin, were framed in the context of the imperial relations between the ruling nations and their colonies with political subjugation of the latter, captured by force or by commerce, providing the groundwork for their economic domination in the interest of the ruling nations. Forms of such arrogation varied, across regions and over time; including the early European invasions of South America, use of slaves or indentured labour across oceans, and the draining off of surpluses from colonies by using trade and financial channels. Imperialism, however, has considerably changed its pattern since then, especially with institutional changes in the prevailing power structure.
The essays in the volume offer a renewed interpretation, which include the alternate interpretations of imperialism and its changing pattern over space and time, incorporating the changing pattern of oppression which reflects the dynamics underlying the specific patterns of oppression. The pattern can be characterised as 鈥榥ew imperialism鈥� under contemporary capitalism as distinct from its 鈥榦ld鈥� form under colonialism. The varied interpretations of imperialism as in the literature do not lessen the significance of the common ground underlying the alternate positions, including the diverse pattern of expropriations under imperialism.
The volume offers fourteen chapters by renowned authors. In this blog, we organise them in the following manner: the first five of those deal with the conceptual basis of imperialism from different angles, the next three chapters deal with contemporary imperialism, and then the rest six chapters of book deal with India, colonialism and contemporary issues with imperialism.
The protests in Punjab are happening at a time when the agrarian economy is under stress. With increasing uncertainty, previously antagonistic groups across classes, castes & gender are coming closer, building a broader base for the agitation & beyond.
Punjab鈥檚 farmers have been unrelenting in their opposition to passed in September. Their sustained and creative opposition continues to make headlines. The central government too remains adamant and increasingly belligerent about sustaining the laws in their current form. The political pressure of the farmers has led the Punjab government, in a symbolic gesture, to pass rejecting the centre鈥檚 farm laws. The past weeks have witnessed bitter stand-offs: farmers blocking rail tracks, the railways suspending services to Punjab , and . A march of thousands of farmers to Delhi earlier this week to register their opposition to these laws is faced police barricades, water cannons, and tear gas shells.
In the face of the unpopularity of the farm laws, the central government has found refuge in different kinds of arguments in favour of the reforms. It has sought to discredit the protests by arguing that the agitation is driven by , and that small and marginal farmers are with these laws. The opposition to the new laws is portrayed as coming from large, prosperous, and politically powerful farmers, who dominate Punjab鈥檚 farmers unions and who benefited the most from the old system.
India was a pioneering country when it as part of its annual Financial Year Budget. Gender Budgeting (GB) highlights the inherently different experiences in receiving financial and welfare support from the state due to their differing needs, priorities and access and serves to ameliorate the barriers to economic inclusion faced by women through a plethora of state financing.
India鈥檚 Gender Budget Statement (GBS) has been released in. Each ministry highlights allocations that are – women specific allocations where 100% of the budget for a specific scheme is assigned to women and a 鈥榩ro-women鈥檚鈥� allocation, where at least 30% of the budget for a specific scheme has been assigned to women to enhance affirmative action.
Figure 1: Proportion of women鈥檚 allocation in India鈥檚 Gender Budget
There is a neoliberal consensus pioneered by and in the 1940s and 1950s in the idea that a market economy-like organisation of sub-national units in a federation will result in overall gains in institutional performance. Literature has focused on the guided by the principle that devolved government is better able to respond to voters鈥� choices. This rests on the assumption that . In this article, I ask whether the prioritisation of service delivery in healthcare and education sectors is indeed something that varies across states in India. The Indian federal system has been increasingly under pressure to devolve power to the states since the economy was set on a path to liberalisation. Initially, this pressure came from the outside, through international institutions (Bretton Woods, largely) but this opportunity was instantaneously accepted by . This has taken shape in the form of reduced centralised monitoring of service delivery, and the funds previously allocated to this end are now being directly transferred to states who have unconditional leeway to allocate it to various uses. This occurred too suddenly without a mechanism in place to safeguard and ensure the equitable delivery of essential services in healthcare and education, and an ever widening gap among states.
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Building on to this, we also have inter-regional issues due to clustering economies. by disgraceful margins. There is a race to the bottom on regulatory easing for corporations, and inter-state bargaining for central resources is competitive, rather than cooperative. Transplantation of a European approach to governance and institutions in the Indian context has meant that natural resources are being plundered by sub-national governments to , as their citizens remain deprived. Public hospitals and primary healthcare infrastructure are slowly decaying into obscurity as shiny, . This is the same case within the , cheap, private schools largely targeting the middle class are driving away resources and interest away from the public school system, which in its crippled state cannot justify a case to be the recipient of sub-national governments鈥� interest.聽Read More »
As the inaugural issue of goes online, 4.7 million cases of COVID-19 and nearly 320,000 deaths have been recorded by the World Health Organization. The waves of cases and deaths have been closely followed by mounting economic losses, leaving governments, communities, and individuals scrambling to find appropriate responses. Yet, even in this uniquely global moment, popular discourse around the pandemic has remained trapped within familiar terms.
Media coverage has to a large extent focused on experiences of the United States and Europe. The frameworks developed to respond to the pandemic have also been US/Euro-centric, frequently inward-looking and isolationist, paying scant attention to expertise, knowledge, and capacities elsewhere. The experiences of other parts of the world, even when taken into account, often serve to cement prior prejudices. In response to this lopsided discussion, Pandemic Discourses aims to foster a more expansive dialogue that encompasses voices from the global South, including China, India, and beyond.Read More »
Kalyan Sanyal鈥檚 Rethinking Capitalist Development (2007, 2014) is a rare work of political economy for many reasons. It is written by an economist, but it鈥檚 so interdisciplinary that you won鈥檛 be able to tell. It is an attempt to theorize capitalism in the postcolonial context from the inside-out rather than outside-in, i.e. with no reference to an ideal type. It refuses to sit neatly in theoretical boundaries 鈥� it is not entirely Marxist, not entirely Postmarxist, not entirely neo-Gramscian, not entirely Foucauldian, but a strange concoction of all. Perhaps the only thing that is not rare is that like most interesting and influential works that emerge from the Global South, it too has been largely ignored in the academic circles of the Global North, especially in Economics.聽Read More »
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