Hindutva Politics and the Indian Economy: An interview with Prabhat Patnaik by Subho Ranjan Dasgupta
Question 1 In one of her recent lecture, eminent Historian Romila Thapar, said that the Indian Republic is teetering on the border line. On one side of the border stands the secular Indian Republic and on the other side the Hindu Rashtra. Do you endorse this point of view ? Yes, I agree that the Republic is teetering on the cusp of a momentous transition; but I see the two sides of this cusp somewhat differently. On one side is a secular, democratic, federal republic where citizens are free of fear and enjoy a set of political rights defended by…
The Protracted Crisis of Capitalism Prabhat Patnaik
There is a commonly-held view that the current crisis in capitalism, which has resulted in a massive output contraction and increase in unemployment, is because of the pandemic; and that once the pandemic gets over, things will go back to “normal”. This view is entirely erroneous for two reasons. The first which has been often discussed in this column, has to do with the fact that even before the pandemic the world economy was slowing down. In fact ever since the financial crisis of 2008 following the collapse of the housing bubble, the real economy of the world had never…
An Elementary Misconception about the Hindu Rashtra Prabhat Patnaik
The BJP as we know is a Hindu-supremacist party. It is the political front of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a fascistic organisation which believes in establishing a Hindu rashtra. Though the BJP itself cannot openly espouse this vision because of its need to remain within the four corners of the constitution, it is trying its best to realise this vision de facto. But what does a Hindu rashtra really mean? The fact that it entails the subversion of secularism and the reduction of the Muslim minority, in particular, to the status of second class citizens, is clear. But many believe…
Lebanese Portents Prabhat Patnaik
The tragic events unfolding in Lebanon are a portent of things to come for the entire third world. Lebanon, a small, highly import-dependent country, has been in the grip of an economic crisis for quite some time as the world recession has become more acute; and with the coronavirus crisis, Lebanon’s economy has been reduced to utterly dire straits. Its two major sources of foreign exchange, tourism and remittances from the Gulf and elsewhere, have virtually dried up owing to the pandemic, causing its currency to depreciate massively, its external debt to be impossible to service, and its ability to…
Detainees during the Pandemic Prabhat Patnaik
It is a common practice all over the world that when those incarcerated face a threat to life, the authorities send them home. Even Benito Mussolini had been forced by an international campaign to shift the Italian Communist Leader Antonio Gramsci, when the latter’s health had deteriorated greatly, first to a clinic in Formia, then to a clinic in Rome, and finally to release him after he had served eleven of his twenty years sentence; it was however already too late by then and Gramsci died within a week of his release. In India when Communists were arrested in large…
New Education Policy: India’s great leap backward Prabhat Patnaik
In a document like the New Education Policy, one must distinguish platitudes from new provisions, including within the latter even the dropping of old platitudes. Thus phrases like “education is a public good”, “6 per cent of GDP should be earmarked for education” are just platitudes, unless some concrete suggestions are advanced to realize to them. In short, repeating old platitudes is inconsequential; it is only not repeating them that has some significance. But such inconsequential repetition of old platitudes in the New Education Policy has impressed many otherwise well-informed observers, and explains the strange phenomenon of their according some…
Income Decline before the Pandemic Prabhat Patnaik
The pandemic and the lockdown are certainly causing an absolute shrinkage in the Gross Domestic Product of the Indian economy. But these tend to obscure something very serious that was happening even earlier, namely a real income decline for vast numbers of working people. There are several pointers to this fact. The rate of chronic unemployment in 2018-19 was the highest ever in the last 45 years at 6 per cent compared to the usual 2 to 3 per cent. The per capita real consumption expenditure in rural India according to the 2017-18 National Sample Survey was 9 per cent…
What could be wrong with a Fiscal Deficit Prabhat Patnaik
I have written about this in the past, but since bad economics comes thick and fast from the representatives of finance capital, especially the Bretton Woods institutions located in Washington DC, there is no harm in my repeating myself. The issue relates to a fiscal deficit and has acquired urgency at present because revenues of governments everywhere in the world, including India, have declined owing to the pandemic-induced lockdown, while the need for government spending on relief and healthcare has escalated steeply, necessitating larger fiscal deficits. Two grossly erroneous propositions are advanced in this context by the representatives of finance:…
Deception on Poverty Prabhat Patnaik
There is much self-congratulatory back-slapping among governments, the World Bank officials and many economists about the “decline in poverty” that is supposed to have occurred between 1990 and the onset of the recent pandemic. This decline is claimed on the basis of an International Poverty Line (IPL) of $ 1.90 a day (at 2011 Purchasing Power Parity) worked out by the Bank, which basically defines poverty across the world as lack of access over one day to the bundle of goods that $1.90 would have bought in the U.S. in 2011. How ridiculously low this figure is can be gauged…
A Tale of Two Countries Prabhat Patnaik
On May 25 in Minneapolis, an African-American arrestee George Floyd was choked to death by a white police officer pressing his knee against Floyd’s neck. The entire America erupted in protests, which targeted not just contemporary racism but even historical icons like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, who had been either slave-owners or open racists. The statues of Confederate leaders during the civil war, Jefferson Davis and Robert Lee, were brought down. The protests even spread to Britain where the statues of some slave traders were brought down and those of Cecil Rhodes and…