Labour Hours Lost during the Pandemic Prabhat Patnaik
The International Labour Organization (ILO) has for some months been bringing out a report that monitors the impact of the pandemic on the world economy, especially the labour-hours lost because of the lockdown and their ramifications. The statistics it provides are not compilations of official data from different countries; they are based on the ILO’s own estimates made with whatever information is available from these countries. One cannot say how accurate the figures are, but they are the only figures we have, and given the meticulousness with which they are estimated, and their approximate compatibility with other data we have,…
Billionaires and the Pandemic Prabhat Patnaik
Wealth distribution data are notoriously difficult to interpret. This is because variations in stock prices affect wealth distribution, so that a stock market boom suddenly makes the rich appear much richer, while a stock market collapse makes wealth distribution less unequal overnight. In other words, the fact that the rich hold a part of their wealth in the form of stocks makes it difficult to estimate their total wealth which now has one durable component and another that is potentially evanescent. There are certain occasions however when one can say something definitive about wealth distribution; and the period of the…
One Hundred Years of Indian Communism Prabhat Patnaik
A theoretical analysis of the prevailing situation, from which the proletariat’s relationship with different segments of the bourgeoisie and the peasantry is derived, and with it the Communist Party’s tactics towards other political forces, is central to the Party’s praxis. A study of this praxis over the last one hundred years of the existence of communism in India, though highly instructive, is beyond my scope here. I shall be concerned only with some phases of this long history. While the Sixth Congress of the Communist International (1928) analysed the colonial question, advancing valuable propositions like “Colonial exploitation produces pauperization, not…
Agriculture Bills and Food Security Prabhat Patnaik
The three Agriculture bills rushed through parliament by the Modi government seek to bring peasant producers into direct contact with corporate buyers without any intervention by the state. The government suggests that intervention in the form of the Minimum Support Price-regime will continue. But this is disingenuous: if the MSP-regime was to continue, why was it not incorporated into the legislation? Besides, the MSP-regime requires supervision by government agents like those installed in mandis; if the mandis lose primacy, as the legislation visualizes, then the MSP-regime becomes infructuous. One consequence of this change has been much discussed, namely that it…
Asymmetric Effects of Growth and Stagnation Prabhat Patnaik
Growth under capitalism is associated with an increase in absolute poverty. Marx had recognised this and expressed it as follows: “Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, the torment of labour, slavery, ignorance, brutalisation and moral degradation at the opposite pole, ie, on the side of the class that produces its own product as capital” (Capital Volume I); or again, “As productive capital grows…the forest of uplifted arms demanding work becomes ever thicker, while the arms themselves become ever thinner” (Wage Labour and Capital). The Indian experience bears this out. It is…
The Move towards a de Facto Unitary State Prabhat Patnaik
Federalism is one of the basic features of the Indian Constitution. In the Constituent Assembly Professor K.T.Shah wanted the term “federal”, together with the term “secular”, included in the Preamble itself, but Dr.Ambedkar rejected it on the grounds that the federal and secular character of the republic was understood and did not need specification. The Constitution in its seventh schedule spelt out the jurisdictions of the Centre and the states in two lists, and areas of common jurisdiction in a third list. Since then the Centre has always tended to encroach on the domain of the states, but this tendency…
Modi’s Agriculture Bills Push Imperialist Agenda Prabhat Patnaik
The two bills rammed through parliament last week were objectionable in every conceivable sense. The very fact of their being rammed through the Rajya Sabha, without being put to vote despite demands for a division, was grossly anti-democratic. The fact of the Centre making unilateral and fundamental changes in agricultural marketing arrangements which fall within the State List of the seventh schedule of the Constitution was a blow against federalism. To resurrect the pre-independence arrangement under which the peasantry was exposed to the capitalist market without any support of the State, and which crushed it during the Great depression of…
A Government Unequal to the Task Prabhat Patnaik
A striking aspect of the 24 per cent decline in GDP in the first quarter of 2020-21 compared to the previous year’s first quarter is the decline by 10.3 per cent in public administration, defence and other public services. This is a sector where the GDP is estimated not by the “output” of the sector but by the government expenditure incurred under these heads. The decline in the GDP originating in this sector therefore means a decline in public expenditure. This is surprising for two reasons: first, it shows that government expenditure, instead of being “counter-contractionary” has been “pro-contractionary”; second,…
The Indian Economy on the Verge of Collapse Prabhat Patnaik
The GDP growth in the first quarter (April-June) of 2020 over the first quarter of the previous year has been minus 24 per cent according to preliminary official estimates. But most knowledgeable people believe that even this is an underestimate of the actual contraction brought about by the lockdown. In fact, a former chief statistician of India, Pronab Sen, believes that the actual contraction would have been about 32 per cent. Others put the figure even higher. But even at the official figure of minus 24 per cent, India’s first quarter contraction has been greater than that of any other…
GST Compensation: Centre’s Bizarre Stand Prabhat Patnaik
When the Goods and Services Tax was introduced, and the states virtually gave up the power to levy indirect taxes which they had enjoyed under the constitution, the centre had solemnly promised that it would compensate them for a period of five years for any revenue shortfall arising from the shift to GST. The shortfall was to be assessed relative to what revenue should have been, assuming a 14 per cent rate of growth. It is this promise which had persuaded many states to fall in line behind the GST. And parliament had enacted the GST (Compensation to states) Act…