PRAGOTI

Just when the failed policy ensemble called ‘good governance’ had run through its course nationally both under the NDA and the UPA, Mr Nitish Kumar’s NDA government in Bihar breathed new life into it. Seven years into sushasan, there are gaping holes in this faith based lore.

Students at the prestigious Harvard University walked out of a class that they felt was biased towards the neoliberal economic system, and did not teach them wholesome economics. Then, they proceeded to join the Occupy Movement, expressing their support for a "movement that is changing American discourse on economic justice". Placing this event in the context of the ongoing four-month old global 'Occupy Movement', which started on the iconic Wall Street on September 17, Dr. Sudipta Bhattacharya asks, "Is the edifice of neo-liberalism finally crumbling?"

It is clear that it is the ruling classes, their political parties and their elitist policies that are at the root of the situation in which Maharashtra and its people find themselves after 51 years. The popular worker-peasant slogan in the Samyukta Maharashtra movement of building a ‘Socialist Maharashtra in a Socialist India’ has been negated by these same forces. With the imperialist-oriented neoliberal policies of the last two decades, the mass of working people are being sidelined, economic and social disparity has widened and corruption has reached unprecedented levels. Ashok Dhawale, Maharashtra state secretary, Communist Party of India (Marxist) writes on the 50th anniversary of the formation of the state.

Prominent economist/literateur/political activist Ashok Mitra is peerless in calling a spade a spade and a neoliberally inclined demon a savant/god sarcastically as he does in the article linked below to his regular column in the Telegraph. And he combines literary wit, economic theory, political understanding and moral outrage like no other in the writing "business".