The Timidity-cum-Callousness of the Modi Government Prabhat Patnaik
The Modi government must be the most timid in the world vis-à-vis international finance capital. By the same token, it must be the most callous in the world vis-à-vis the working people of the country. The one is the flip side of the other; and the government’s economic policy during the pandemic bears ample testimony to its timidity-cum- callousness. All the advanced country governments provided sizeable relief packages to their populations whose income sources had dried up because of the pandemic and the associated lockdown. Even Donald Trump’s United States unveiled a package amounting to 10 per cent of GDP…
A Matter of Survival of the Peasantry Prabhat Patnaik
The kisans gathered around the Delhi border have unerringly put their fingers on the real issue confronting them, namely their very survival as peasants. Till now there was an arrangement in the country which, though crumbling under the impact of neo-liberalism, still kept the peasantry alive. The three laws brought in by the Modi government are meant to remove this life-line altogether. These three laws thus carry the neo-liberal agenda in this sphere to its limit. This is also why there can be no meeting ground between the protesting kisans and the government, within the ambit of these laws; they…
Misconceptions about the Food Economy Prabhat Patnaik
The Indian intelligentsia has an incredible propensity to swallow the self-serving arguments of metropolitan capitalism that are typically supposed to constitute ‘economic wisdom’; and nowhere is this more evident than in the case of India’s food economy. There is a plethora of centre-page articles in newspapers these days suggesting that Indian kisans should move away from producing foodgrains towards other crops, which is actually a demand that metropolitan countries have been making for quite some time. They want us to import foodgrains from them, of which they have a surplus, to meet the excess of our domestic demand over domestic…
Countering the Corporate – Hindutva Narrative on the Nation Prabhat Patnaik
The kisan agitation has become more than simply a fight for MSP or against the corporatization of agriculture. Through its practice, it is recovering a narrative that is opposed to the hegemonic narrative promoted under neo-liberalism. And as the Modi government’s skulduggery for breaking the movement intensifies in the coming days, this recovery will become more and more comprehensive, clear-cut, and oppositional. Let me illustrate the point by referring to the narrative about the ‘nation’. The concept of the ‘nation’ crystallized with the emergence of the bourgeoisie in seventeenth century Europe and acquired particular prominence with the rise of finance…
Agriculture and the Free Market Prabhat Patnaik
In the context of the on-going country-wide kisan movement for repealing Modi’s three Agriculture Bills, while an overwhelming majority of commentators have stood with the position taken by the kisans, a few, though not necessarily agreeing with Modi, have raised the question: why shouldn’t agriculture operate within a free market? It is worth recapitulating here the answer to this question which is well-known but can bear repetition. The free market solution is of course patently sub-optimal for the economy as a whole as Keynes had shown; but let us forget the Keynesian argument for the moment. Even so, the market…
What the Second Quarter GDP Estimates Reveal Prabhat Patnaik
It is ironic that government spokespersons should exhibit so much euphoria over the second quarter (July-September) Gross Domestic Product estimate, which shows a drop “only” of 7.5 per cent compared to second quarter 2019-20. The expectation had been that the drop would be larger, about 8 to 9 per cent; and as the first quarter drop had been 23.9 per cent, the talk has been of a “stronger recovery” than anticipated. The irony however is that on closer look the recovery appears both dubious, as well as immiserizing and hence fragile. It is dubious because there is a substantial increase…
A Strike against the Discourse of Unreason Prabhat Patnaik
The November 26 strike is significant not only because it protests against the Modi government’s brazen and unprecedented attacks on workers and peasants in the country, not only because these attacks carry forward an imperialist agenda, but for a deeper and less discussed reason as well which can be seen as follows. The ascendancy of the Hindutva elements derives from the success they have achieved in shifting the public discourse in the country. The discourse they displaced had occupied centre-stage for close to a century, indeed ever since 1917 when Gandhiji had visited Champaran to investigate the condition of the…
Immiserisation behind the Recovery Prabhat Patnaik
Ministers from Narendra Modi to Nirmala Sitaraman are talking about a recovery of the Indian economy from the pandemic-induced crisis. Even the Reserve Bank of India which estimated the second quarter GDP growth to have been -8.6 percent, has seen signs of recovery in October. Of course there had to be a recovery from the deep abyss to which the lockdown had pushed the economy, as some degree of normalcy returned; it is no reflection of any virtue of the government. Even the 8.6 percent drop in GDP in the second quarter (compared to the previous year’s second quarter), represents…
Modi on Demonetisation Prabhat Patnaik
On the fourth anniversary of demonetization, Narendra Modi has claimed that it succeeded in curbing black money. He probably believes he can get away with making this claim because of the passage of time. But most people in the country know this to be a lie for a simple reason. For demonetization to curb black money, there must be some mechanism through which it can be shown to do so. Otherwise it would be no different from claiming that the Olympic Games of 2016 curbed black money in India. Besides, since the fact of black money being curbed is itself…
Capitalism and Inheritance Prabhat Patnaik
It is often believed that the ability to pass on property to one’s progeny is an essential element of capitalism, without which the capitalists’ incentives will dry up and the system will lose its dynamism. Nothing could be further from the truth; indeed the acquisition of property through inheritance is contrary to the bourgeois justification for capitalist property. This justification lies in the claim that the capitalists have some special quality that is rare, whose employment makes the nation prosperous and for which they must be rewarded; but there is no unanimity among bourgeois spokesmen on what exactly this special…