Development/Growth
Kirankumar Vissa writes; Everyone in the media has been talking about the slew of pro-farmer measures included in Budget 2017, how it is a Budget for the ‘have nots’ and one that will give a big fillip to agriculture. It is time to call this Budget what it is–a big prank on India’s farming community….
Read More about Why the 2017 Union Budget is deceptively ‘pro-farmer’
Economy
A wave of revulsion rolls around the world. Approval ratings for incumbent leaders are everywhere collapsing. Symbols and slogans trump facts and nuance. One in six Americans now believes that military rule would be a good idea. From all this I draw the following, peculiar conclusion: no country with a McDonald’s can remain a democracy….
Read More about George Monbiot: The Golden Arches Theory of Decline
A view of the Manhattan skyline
ALTERNATIVES
Western liberal democracies dominate the top rankings of progress indices. But are they the best models of development when their standard of living is unsustainable and their quality of life is, arguably, declining? Only when environmental impacts are given significant weight, as in the Happy Planet and Sustainable Society indexes, does this ranking change substantially….
Read More about The mismeasure of progress: Is the West really the best?
Economy
A new study released by Oxfam ahead of the World Economic Forum meeting shows that just 57 billionaires in India now have same wealth ($ 216 billion) as that of the bottom 70 per cent population of the country. Globally, just 8 billionaires have the same amount of wealth as the poorest 50 per cent….
Read More about India’s richest 1% now own 58% of the country’s total wealth
CLIMATE CRISIS
As 2017 dawns, in a great many ways, modern industrial civilization has flung itself forward into a darkness where no stars offer guidance and no echoes tell what lies ahead… We’re not discussing the end of the world; events like those that can be found repeated many times in the histories of other failing civilizations….
Read More about John Michael Greer: A sneak preview of the year 2017ALTERNATIVES
Steve Keen, Professor of Economics at Kingston University London, is a long time critic of conventional economic thought, and is also developing an alternative dynamic approach to economic modelling. In this interview with Steven Sackur on BBC HardTalk, he tackles the prospect for a debt-deflation on the back of the enormous private debts accumulated globally….
Read More about Watch: ‘Anti-economist’ Steve Keen on why economists can’t be trusted
Consumerism/Lifestyle
George Monbiot in The Guardian: The rise of celebrity culture did not happen by itself… It is hard for people to attach themselves to a homogenised franchise, owned by a big corporation. So the machine needs a mask. It must wear the face of someone we see as often as we see our next-door neighbours….
Read More about Celebrity isn’t just harmless fun – it’s the smiling face of the corporate machine
Development/Growth
Colin Todhunter writes: Data from the Multi-dimensional Poverty Index indicates that 20 years ago, India had the second-best social indicators among the six South Asian countries, but now it has the second worst position. Bangladesh has less than half of India’s per-capita GDP but has infant and child mortality rates lower than that of India….
Read More about What has neoliberal capitalism ever done for India?
Economy
Live Mint reports: The richest 1% of Indians now own 58.4% of the country’s wealth, according to the latest data on global wealth from Switzerland based Credit Suisse Group AG. In the last two years, the share of the top 1% has increased at a cracking pace, from 49% in 2014 to 58.4% in 2016….
Read More about The richest 1% of Indians now own 58.4% of the country’s wealth
ECOCIDE/EXTINCTION
Andreas Malm writes: Mainstream climate discourse is positively drenched in references to humanity as such, human nature, the human enterprise, humankind as one big villain driving the train. Enter Naomi Klein, who in ‘This Changes Everything’ lays bare the myriad ways in which capital accumulation pour fuel on the fire now consuming the earth system….
Read More about The Anthropocene myth: Blaming all of humanity for climate change lets capitalism off the hookEconomy
When we get our story wrong, we get our future wrong. Much like the Trans-Pacific Partnership “trade deal”, everything we’re told about capitalism and our economy is a pack of lies. Time for a new story, says preeminent scholar and critic of corporate globalization, David Korten, the best-selling author of ‘When Corporations Rule the World’….
Read More about David Korten: From serving money to serving life: A sacred story for our time
CLIMATE CRISIS
On the eve of the American presidential election, where the two leading candidates offer little hope for climate action, it’s worth revisiting this hard-hitting 2006 article by Chad Harbach, who warned, “(Other countries) will do nothing until the United States demonstrates that a grand-scale transition to renewable energy can be achieved by big industrial countries.”…
Read More about Flashback: On global warming
Development/Growth
Development is more than an ideology; it is an ideology in service to an economic necessity which, in turn, is not a real necessity but contingent on a growth dependent debt-based financial system. Until that system changes, the pressure to develop— to convert natural resources into commodities and social relationships into services— will not abate….
Read More about Charles Eisenstein: Development in the Ecological Age
Food/Farming
Anandi Sharan writes: Devinder Sharma is a founder member of Kisan Ekta, that claims to represent ‘400 million farmers, fishermen and farm workers’. But does Sharma, a close associate of the controversial yoga teacher-turned businessman Baba Ramdev, understand the ground reality of the politics of food, agriculture and hunger? Whose interests does Kisan Ekta serve?…
Read More about Who is Devinder Sharma? Whose interests does Kisan Ekta serve?Food/Farming
Suraj Kumar Thube writes: Much of the naturalisation of the suicides has also got to do with the urban perception of rural areas and rural lifestyles. The oriental imagination still does not cease to colonise our minds in terms of perceiving the rural as a stagnant and unchanging space characterised by divisive notions of caste-consciousness….
Read More about Are we working harder to make India’s farmers suffer?Education/Awareness
A parallel legal universe, open only to corporations and largely invisible to everyone else, helps executives convicted of crimes escape punishment. In this court, a nation that tries to prosecute a corrupt CEO or ban dangerous pollution can be sued for millions, even billions of dollars for ‘interfering with profits’. A investigative series from BuzzFeed….
Read More about Exposed: The global super court that rules the worldBookshelf
Professor Immanuel Ness, author of Southern Insurgency: The Coming of the Global Working Class which has India, China and South Africa as case studies, spoke to The Wire on trade unions and labour laws in India, social relations between labour and capital in the global south, merits of spontaneity in workers’ agitations and much more….
Read More about Watch: Immanuel Ness on the ‘super-exploitation’ of contractual workers in India
Bookshelf
A new book, The Great Invention by Ehsan Masood, unveils the genesis of the Gross Domestic Product and how it shaped the modern economic paradigm. It comes at a time when a growing number of people are questioning this flawed metric. Down to Earth magazine presents exclusive excerpts from the book, followed by a debate….
Read More about Debate: Is GDP a true and accurate measurement of growth?
Food/Farming
Devinder Sharma writes: The real cost of economic reforms is being borne by rural India. The first-ever Socio Economic Census has now clearly brought out this stark reality… The economic wealth of 15 families in India equals that of 600 million people… On the other hand, 60-crore farmers are paying the price for unjust economic reforms….
Read More about India has sacrificed agriculture on the altar of GDP
Consumerism/Lifestyle
C.P. Chandrasekhar writes: Even the kind of economic growth that liberalisation actually delivered is proving unsustainable. So, the belief that growth would remain high for years to come, delivering benefits even to those at the bottom of the income pyramid and those steeped in poverty and deprivation, has now revealed itself to be a myth….
Read More about 25 years of ‘economic reforms’: The myth of growth
