View Articles

Union Budget 2023-24 has a greater responsibility of protecting India’s workforce at a time when they are at high risk of being forced into accepting lower quality jobs, as warned by ILO’s World Employment and Social Outlook (WESO) Trend 2023, large scale job cuts is adding into the woes of the employed, unemployment rate have been rising, and job opportunities are set to shrink considerably.

The Modi government wants a stranglehold on the media. Period. Be it regular media outlets or citizen journalism on social media. The government does not want bad press. It does not tolerate criticism of “government policies, programmes, initiatives and achievements”. It will do anything to avoid taking hits on the chin. It has a glass jaw. So, it has weaponized the Press Information Bureau (PIB).

As pre-poll campaigning heats up for the coming Assembly polls in Tripura and Meghalaya, people of Nagaland are somewhat disappointed that the greater ’political solution ‘ for the state remains unsettled. State-based regional parties as well as local Congress leaders acknowledge that their participation in the polls may not be whole-hearted.

The Bharat Jodo Yatra will culminate on January 30 in Srinagar with a flag hoisting ceremony at Srinagar on the anniversary of the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. By then, the yatra which began on September 7, 2022 would have traversed the length of the sub-continent from Kanyakumari to Himalayas. The yatra has undoubtedly enthused the Congress cadre and imparted new life in the party which was deemed incapacitated. More importantly, it has replaced the earlier ‘Papu’ image of Rahul Gandhi’s with that ofa mature individual and a creditable political leader. His image of removing hate and introducing love between communities in the nation has marked, igniting much debate in social media. Even Rahul Gandhi’s detractors agree that the difficult Yatra has earned him the respect and support of the people in areas where it has passed. Attempts by BJP leaders to criticize the Yatra and Rahul Gandhi have not achieved much success.

Two reports by UN agencies released this week on born and unborn child mortality has brought shocking truths. India has the distinction of the largest number of stillbirths, children dying by preventable deaths before their fifth birthday, and also persons dying before their 25th birth day, which is a matter or serious concern since the country is likely to become the largest populated country in the world as expected by UN on April 14, 2023.

Poor households of the country have increasingly been put into precarious conditions as far as education of their children are concerned. Public educational institutions, which are the only destination for poor students, are deteriorating in imparting quality education due to a range of issues including insufficient budget among others. Even fundamental right to education has not been honoured, which is reflected in decline in budgetary allocation for Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan compared to 2020-21, while population is increasing. Education, beyond this primary level, have been made costlier through a range of policies, a general trend under PM Modi rule since 2014. Tuition fees have been increased and taxes have been imposed on educational services and input materials that have made reading and writing materials unaffordably costly for poor students.

The recent announcement of the Narendra Modi government of a Rs 20,000 crore (Rs 19,794 crore) National Green Hydrogen Mission has created two kinds of questions. The most common reaction is what is green hydrogen? And do we have a plan for a green hydrogen path for which Rs 20,000 crore is being earmarked?

All regimes based on class antagonism require a discourse to legitimise class oppression and this discourse in turn requires a vocabulary of its own. The neoliberal regime too has developed its own discourse and vocabulary and a key concept in this vocabulary is “populism”. This concept is given great currency by the media, which is peopled by members drawn from the upper middle class who have been major beneficiaries of the neo-liberal regime and have therefore developed a vested interest in its continuation. So pervasive is the reach of this concept that even well-meaning and progressive members of the literati have fallen victim to its abuse and employ the term with the pejorative connotation typically imparted to it by the corporate-owned media.

Don’t India’s opposition parties have feelings for the electorate? Watching them behave the way they do does not betray any people-friendly vibes. It would not be wrong to label them cynics. In fact, they should be “gently poked in the arm and told to stop being such misanthropes.” That is one view. India’s opposition parties have given up even before the battle has begun in earnest is the other view.

Winning the battle of Bengal will open the wide vista for the RSS to have its political hegemony on the entire eastern and north eastern states. Though the RSS has succeeded in having a deep penetration in the north east, by exploiting the internal conflicts amongst the indigenous people of the belt, this is not enough to enable it to have a control on the entire eastern India. Obviously to achieve its objective, Bengal has become the fulcrum for the RSS operation.