PRAGOTI

Marx summarises the inherent dynamics of capitalism and its historical direction: “The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along with, and under it. Centralisation of the means of production and socialisation of labour at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. This integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated.” Sitaram Yechury writes in the Hindustan Times.

The Indian Left cannot be accused of deviance for its decision to withdraw its support for the UPA government on the issue of the Indo-US nuclear deal. It has for long espoused the position that given the aggressive expansionism of the US under Bush, the silence or collaboration of other major capitalist powers in response to this aggression and the end of multipolarity after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the contradiction between Imperialism led by the US and the people of developing countries like India had emerged as the principal contradiction of our times. Supporting any truck with the US would have meant both a violation of its programme and a betrayal of its cadre and the people. Unresolvable disagreement over any attempt to forge a strategic relationship with the US through the instrumentality of a specially crafted nuclear deal was inevitable,says C.P.Chandrasekhar

The soul of parliamentary democracy in India was destroyed during the past week.

Courtesy: Economic and Political Weekly

Cartoon: Courtesy The Hindu

In perhaps the darkest day in Indian parliamentary “democracy”, the UPA government used the maxim, “if not by hook, we will win by crook” to win a trust vote that was necessitated owing to the withdrawal of left support to the government.