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Social Darwinism, espoused by Sociologist Herbert Spencer from Darwin’s theory of ‘natural selection’, was meant to rationalize the ugliest form of capitalism in late nineteenth century. Spencer assimilated the theory of natural selection based on ‘the survival of the fittest’, which, he said was preservation of the favoured races in their struggle for life. Spencer was writing in the context of economic evolution when he mentioned survival of the fittest. For Darwin, it was concern for the entire humanity. Darwin was expanded by Engels. He said evolution of human being came on two wheels. One was labour and other language, both evolving based on each other and dividing the society into two parts, standing together and also locked in a constant struggle against each other.

It is getting clearer with time that none of the national policies are formulated keeping in view the political philosophy, economic character, as well as social and cultural attitude of ruling dispensation. The present draft policy, NEP 2019, is also no exception. It is a reflection of the historical conflict of forces to dominate the education process, that is to say between democratization and captivisation. In this policy draft democratic, welfare and inclusive agendas have been ignored. There is also no reference to global outlook that has its own significance and cannot be underestimated.

A recent order of the Union Ministry of Finance restricting entry and movement of accredited media persons in that Ministry is fascistic in nature as it points to curb and control of the media being witnessed under the current NDA Union Government where the media house owners are arm-twisted under threat of some frame-up and punitive action or lavish advertisements. The result has been willful neglect of highlighting people’s problems in their reporting, analysis and comments limiting themselves to all eulogizing the government. It prevents journalists to update their knowledge of the workings of the government in that Ministry, pursue some exclusive story, seeking clarification on some policy permutations and combinations in order to get to the truth as also scrutiny of the government.

With his vicious attack on Reps. Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Rashida Tlaib, the current “occupant” of the White House officially launched his re-election campaign this week.

The decision of the Modi.2 Government to invest a total of Rs. 100 lakh crore in the infrastructure sector during the next five years, is going to give a big boost to the public sector enterprises in the core sectors, especially, steel coal and construction companies. The announcement made by the Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in 2019-20 budget has already geared the leading PSEs to start planning taking the next five years in view.

The maiden budget of Nirmala Sitharaman could be rightly called as the manifesto of Modinomics for the coming five years. In her budget speech which lasted for more than two hours she was trying to present the growth trajectory of the NDA government. In unequivocal terms, she made it clear that for development, it would be private investment to play the prime role. Hyper nationalism of the Sangh Parivar has no hesitation to sing praises for foreign capital, in the form of FDI. The economy is surrogated to serve big capital from around the world. In the political economy of the right reactionary government, agrarian crisis is not a matter of concern. Same is the case with unemployment.

Ask anyone, except our Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, what is the expected growth rate of India in 2019-20? The answer will be around 7 per cent which is based on calculations of all reliable national and international organizations. However, India’s budget for the current financial year has calculated India’s GDP, receipts, and expenditures at a growth rate of 12 per cent as against the recent fall in the actual growth rate to 6.8 per cent. Such a great exaggeration was resorted to make a good-looking balance sheet, but it would not help the government to overcome the financial mess of its own making. The false and magnified picture of the economy cannot conceal the reality.

Diabolic approaches by political parties and their leaders are dragging the Supreme Court into day to day politics but so far the court has managed to get better of the situation by doing some real tight rope walking.

Al Green is again trying to get his U.S. House colleagues to impeach Donald Trump. The Democratic congressman from Houston tried twice before, in GOP-run Congresses, to get the House to impeach the Republican president for his racism, xenophobia, sexism, and incitement of hatred nationwide. Green failed, getting around 60 votes each time, out of 435 lawmakers.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The disturbing incident of stabbing of a student in the University College in Thiruvananthapuram bares the dangerous dimensions student politics has acquired in Kerala.