PRAGOTI

"Gross misinterpretations of Marxist writings on caste, as by Manash Bhattacharjee in the Outlook, would only help divide the united movement against caste in India. The Marxist Left, always respectful of Ambedkar, has successfully demonstrated the need to integrate issues of caste oppression with class struggle. Ambedkar himself had argued that if the French revolution was the first stage of human liberation, the Russian revolution would indeed be its second stage. These are important meeting points in political practice. A movement forward from here requires opening up of spaces where Marxists respectful of Ambedkar and Ambedkarites interested in Marx can meet, engage in debates and integrate their movements for emancipation. The evolution of such a united movement should not be allowed to be weakened by spreading falsehoods and misinterpreting positions." R.Ramakumar writes. 

 The sudden removal of Bo Xilai from the post of secretary of the Communist Party of China in the Chongqing metropolis and his suspension from the CPC politburo and central committee points not just to a power struggle in the upper echelons of the party but also a rejection of the “Chongqing model” by the leadership. By itself, the Chongqing model was a redistributive, reformative programme that intended to address the failings of neo-liberalism, but its repression has united leftist opinion in favour of Bo Xilai. The article has been republished from the Economic and Political Weekly with the author's consent. 

Pragoti salutes the nameless and the ordinary whose valiance and courage in life and death will not be headlines in the chronicles of the Mumbai carnage. The immediate appeals to jingoistic nationalism and communalism by the hard and soft Hindu right, and the proposals to launch war and pass draconian laws, dished out by the mainstream media, is an attempt to ensure that the people are put through more of such terror. We stand committed to the struggles of the ordinary and the nameless people of India to fight terrorism and all political harbingers of terror.

In this wide ranging interview, Noam Chomsky talks about his new book "Hopes and Prospects" and dwells on the issues of Haiti, the US economy and polity, the growth processes in India and China and the current political state of Latin America. We are grateful to Keane Bhatt for making this interview available to us.

 In the recent period, alongwith a number of critical discussions on the electoral set-back suffered by the CPI (M) and the Left in last Lok Sabha elections, there have been some questions raised about the practice of democratic centralism as the organizational principle of the Communist Party. Such critiques have come from persons who are intellectuals associated with the Left or the CPI (M). 

 Everybody agrees that capitalism is undergoing a serious crisis, but different people read this crisis differently. The commonest view, held even by progressive economists like Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz, is that the crisis is entirely a consequence of the collapse of the housing ''bubble''; since in this situation of crisis, private expenditure, whether on consumption or on investment, is unlikely to increase in the foreseeable future, a revival is possible only through an increase in State expenditure, which means that both in the United States and in Europe, far from adopting austerity measures, the State should instead be increasing its expenditure. [This article was first published here]

The film barely offers an honest debate on caste-based reservation; instead the plot merely promotes private education, mixed with an unhealthy dose of charity, individual morality and traditionalism, writes SAQIB KHAN

A poetic tribute to the revolutionary Marathi poet Narayan Surve by Pallavi Chavan. The poem, originally composed in Marathi, has also been translated in English by the poet. Both the versions are included in the post below.