-NetworkIdeas.org It is perhaps fitting that the seriousness of the coronavirus threat hit most of the Western world around the Ides of March, the traditional day of reckoning of outstanding debts in Ancient Rome. The previous week had been a veritable roller coaster ride. The World Health Organization (WHO) finally declared the contagion a pandemic, governments scrambled to respond, the virus dominated the news cycle as well as the plethora of...

-Newsclick.in The roots of the present economic slowdown squarely lie within the neoliberal trajectory, which has led to a crisis of overproduction. Demonetisation and ‘hasty’ GST only aggravated it. With former prime minister Manmohan Singh resurfacing on the political landscape and articulating once more the orthodox neoliberal position, one can now clearly discern three distinct perspectives on the current economic slowdown. The first is the orthodox neoliberal position that Singh has now articulated....

-Frontline.in The Oxfam India report on employment says jobs remain a huge challenge in India where half of the workforce depends on agriculturefor livelihood. Employment, or the lack of it, has emerged as one of the most contentious issues in the general election this year. Most surveys show that the single biggest concern preoccupying the electorate, especially the youth, is unemployment. The very fact that the government introduced a quota for the...

-Frontline.in Interview with Aruna Roy. ARUNA ROY is a well-known social and political activist. A former Indian Administrative Service officer, she resigned from the IAS in 1975 and has since worked with the most oppressed in society. Aruna Roy’s observation on government service is indicative of her future concerns: “Everyone calls it an elite service; I always felt the discourse should be a bit better than what it was. I was shocked...

-TheWire.in Mexican economist David Barkin on India's neoliberal economics, growing inequalities, agrarian distress and more. David Barkin is Professor of Economics at the Metropolitan Autonomous University in Mexico City. He received his doctorate in economics from Yale University and was awarded the National Prize in Political Economics in 1979 for his analysis of inflation in Mexico. His research has focused on the development of an alternative to the capitalist economic model. In an...