The Scandal of Old-age Pensions Prabhat Patnaik
Junior Minister for Rural Development in the central government, Sadhvi Niranjan Jyoti, ruled out in parliament any increase in the amount of monthly pension given by the centre to the elderly under the National Social Assistance Programme (The Telegraph, August 22). The amount currently being given to each beneficiary under this programme is a princely sum of Rs 200 per month for persons between ages 60 and 79, and Rs 500 per month for persons of 80 years and above! It is a shame and a disgrace that the central government offers such an utterly paltry sum to aged citizens.…
Neo-liberalism and Nationhood Prabhat Patnaik
The anti-colonial nationalism that informed the struggle for liberation in third world countries was, as is well-known, of an entirely different genre from the bourgeois nationalism that had emerged in Europe in the seventeenth century. There is a tendency in the West, including even among progressives, to treat all “nationalism” as a homogeneous and reactionary category. They treat even anti-colonial nationalism as if it is no different from European bourgeois nationalism, notwithstanding the several crucial differences between the two. Three at least of these differences are of importance. First, European nationalism was imperialist from the very beginning; second, it was…
Mexico’s Turn away from Neo-liberalism Prabhat Patnaik
President Lopez Obrador of Mexico in his inaugural speech itself had called neo-liberalism a “disaster” and a “calamity”. The Leftist political party, MORENA, to which he belongs, had stated in its programme: “The global economic crisis has revealed the failure of the neo-liberal model. The economic policy imposed by the international financial organizations leads to the fact that Mexico is one of the countries with the slowest growth.” MORENA’s programme had proposed instead that the “State should assume responsibility to lead development without foreign interference”. With this perspective, Obrador has been putting in place a range of economic changes that…
Capital and Imperialism – Theory, History and the Present Utsa Patnaik and Prabhat Patnaik
6.25 x 9.5 inches (x+382) 392 pages Hardback ISBN: 978-81-947175-9-1 Rs 1200 For sale in India and South Asia only Mainstream economics invariably sees capitalism as an isolated and closed system. In this path-breaking book, authors Utsa Patnaik and Prabhat Patnaik argue that this is both historically false and logically untenable. An essentially money-using economy like capitalism is inconceivable unless placed within a pre-capitalist setting which it dominates and modifies for its own purposes. Colonialism created such a setting. Metropolitan capitalism transferred massive resources from colonies gratis fuelling industrial revolution, and later found external markets, thus avoiding domestic stagnation, by displacing craft…
The Household and the State Prabhat Patnaik
Simple analogies can be deceptive, even dangerous. An example is the analogy often drawn between the household and the state. Just as a household cannot “live beyond its means” for ever, and sooner or later its creditors not only stop giving loans but take away the assets of the household for defaulting on loan repayment, likewise, the state cannot “live beyond its means” for ever and go on borrowing ad infinitum; sooner or later its creditors stop giving loans and even attach its assets. This is a very common argument. One has heard it innumerable times, from spokesmen of Bretton…
Equality and Scarcity Prabhat Patnaik
Many would remember that the Soviet Union and other Eastern European socialist countries used to be characterized by long queues of consumers for several commodities. This was a source of much derision in the West and was attributed to the inefficiency of the socialist system of production, compared to capitalism where one just had to walk into a supermarket and buy whatever one wanted to. As a matter of fact, far from being a symptom of inefficiency, the long consumer queues were a reflection of the highly egalitarian nature of the socialist societies; likewise, the free access to goods under…
A Blot on the Nation Prabhat Patnaik
The Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act is a blot on the nation. In no nation reputed to be civilized is there a law that allows the State to pick up literally anybody and keep the person in jail for years, without trial and without bail; and if at the end of the trial, whenever it occurs, the person is found innocent, then there is no question of the State being obliged to pay any compensation for the lost years of the person’s life. But this is exactly what the UAPA does. Even the British colonial government did not arrogate to itself…
Three Decades of Economic Liberalization Prabhat Patnaik
It is thirty years since India adopted neo-liberal policies in 1991, though some would date their introduction even earlier to 1985. Newspapers are full of assessments of the impact of these policies on the economy, and liberalizers from Manmohan Singh downwards, have suddenly become visible, lauding their handiwork, while lamenting at best that the benefits of liberalization have been unevenly distributed. Manmohan Singh has recently said that “a healthy and dignified life for every Indian must be prioritised”; one wonders what prevented him from doing so when he was at the helm of affairs. Such an assessment, that liberalization greatly…
The Nationalisation of Banks in 1969 Prabhat Patnaik
On July 19, 1969, 14 major banks were nationalised in the country. Today, after 52 years there is some talk again of privatising the nationalised banks, which naturally raises the question: why were banks nationalised at all? The answer to this question is usually given in terms of the specific advantages of bank nationalisation; this is correct and appropriate, but what needs also to be kept in mind is the overall perspective underlying bank nationalisation. This is important because the issue of privatisation of banks today cannot be discussed without reference to this perspective. Bank nationalisation was neither a socialist…
Neo-liberalism and the Extreme Right Prabhat Patnaik
There has of late been an upsurge of extreme right-wing, fascist, semi-fascist or neo-fascist parties all over the world in a manner reminiscent of the 1930s. Fascist governments invariably serve the interests of monopoly capital in general, and of the newer, less “liberal” and more reactionary section of it in particular, which is why Georgi Dimitrov, president of the Communist International, had, at its Seventh Congress, characterised a fascist State as the “open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary section of finance capital”; but fascist movements of this earlier era had begun as movements against big business. Having acquired a…