Why this fuss about income inequality? https://www.business-standard.com/opinion/columns/why-this-fuss-about-income-inequality-124032801231_1.html 

India has always had income inequality. In the past, it housed a large swathe of the world’s poor, and now it also houses some of the world’s richest, and many in between. This columnist, a homegrown, non-economist people researcher, struggles to understand the expectation that moving from socialism to capitalism should have decreased income inequality, despite the starting point of a steep pyramid on income and human development parameters.
After 1991, a smaller group with skills, assets, education and enterprise, set free with the world as their oyster, seized the opportunity and made quantum leaps in income and wealth. 

There is still a huge gap between aspiration (what I want for myself and my family) and opportunity/ access for decent education, health care and employment — more so, In some parts of the country than others. It is this gap that needs constant monitoring and fixing more than the gap between the rich and the poor.

Comment on WA: newer conservative narratives pushed in between blatantly communal divides. namely gap between aspiration and access to education, health care and employment .. in effect Socially Necessary Goods as the carrot... ie the case for Socially Necessary Time of the people with the illusion of "Ease of Living" being provided by IT, phones, communications,

Modi Attacks Congress; CJI Letter Sparks Debate  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUtmPmZLQUc Law Chakra

600 lawyers, including Salve, write to CJI: 'Vested interests' trying to influence judiciary;  https://www.businesstoday.in/india/story/600-lawyers-including-salve-write-to-cji-vested-interests-trying-to-influence-judiciary-full-text-423270-2024-03-28 Over 600 Indian lawyers, including senior figures Harish Salve, have written to Chief Justice Chandrachud, alleging that a "vested interest group" is pressuring and defaming the justice system using "frivolous logic and stale political agendas."

More than 600 lawyers, including senior advocate Harish Salve and Bar Council of India chairperson Manan Kumar Mishra, has written to the Chief Justice of India, alleging that a "vested interest group" is trying to put pressure on the judiciary and defame courts "on the basis of frivolous logic and stale political agendas". "Their pressure tactics are most obvious in political cases, particularly those involving political figures accused of corruption.

PM Modi backs lawyers' letter on 'bid to pressure judiciary' https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/pm-modi-backs-lawyers-letter-on-bid-to-pressure-judiciary/articleshow/108860938.cms Akhilesh Singh & Amit Anand Choudhary "To browbeat and bully others is vintage Congress culture. Five decades ago, they had called for a 'committed judiciary' - they shamelessly want commitment from others for their sellfish interests but desist from any commitment towards the nation ..

https://twitter.com/pbhushan1/status/1773321429523533894 Prashant Bhushan : Governments favourite lawyer Salve tried very hard to stop the exposé of bribery and extortion details of Electoral Bonds. His accounts in tax havens were exposed by the Panama and Pandora papers. He now leads a pack of 600 nondescript lawyers trying to influence the CJI to back off from tough orders

"Hypocrisy": Congress On PM's Post After Lawyers' Letter To Chief Justice https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/hypocrisy-congress-on-pms-post-after-lawyers-letter-tochiefjustice-5327989 
Jairam Ramesh said in a post on X, "The PM's brazenness in orchestrating and coordinating an attack on the judiciary, in the name of defending the judiciary, is the height of hypocrisy!"

Jayram Ramesh: https://twitter.com/Jairam_Ramesh/status/1773314306290954401  The PM's brazenness in orchestrating and coordinating an attack on the judiciary, in the name of defending the judiciary, is the height of hypocrisy! The Supreme Court has delivered body blows to him in recent weeks. The Electoral Bonds Scheme is but one example. 

https://twitter.com/kharge/status/1773351581070578014  Kharje Post

1. You conveniently forget that 4 senior-most Supreme Court judges were forced to hold an unprecedented press conference and warn against "destruction of Democracy". That happened under your regime. One of the judges was nominated by your Govt to the Rajya Sabha. So WHO wants a 'committed judiciary' ?

2. You forget that your party has fielded a Former HC Judge in West Bengal for the current Lok Sabha elections. Why was this candidature bestowed on him?

3. Who brought the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC)? Why was it stuck down by the Hon'ble Supreme Court?

Modi ji, Institution after Institution is being 'bullied' by you into submission, so STOP pinning the blame on the Congress party, for your own sins!

You have mastered the art of manipulating Democracy and hurting the Constitution !

India's elections are coming up...are the media up to the task? | The India Report https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHEgb8ZSA1c Al Jazeera English

With India amid a national election campaign, its news media is in sharp focus. Until recently it was believed that the sheer diversity of outlets ensured a range of perspectives, but now, India’s mainstream media has largely been co-opted by the Bharatiya Janata Party and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Just how did the media in India get to this point and what does it mean for the upcoming elections?

Featuring:
Ravish Kumar - Former Host, NDTV https://youtu.be/rHEgb8ZSA1c?t=250
Shashi Shekhar Vempati - Former CEO, Prasar Bharati https://youtu.be/rHEgb8ZSA1c?t=294  TV rating system responsible...
Pramod Raman - Chief Editor, MediaOne 
Amy Kazmin - Former South Asia Bureau Chief, Financial Times
Meena Kotwal - Founder, The Mooknayak 

‘Journalists of Republic TV are propagandists’: Sagarika Ghose on BJP, media, Marxism https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LxOWpdGWKQ  The News Minute  

Sagarika Ghose, the journalist-turned-politician who recently made headlines for joining the Trinamool Congress, is set to contest the Rajya Sabha polls.

In this candid conversation with Sudipto Mondal for What’s your ism? – a podcast by The News Minute and Newslaundry – Ghose talks about the BJP, Mamata Banerjee, media, Marxism and intellectuals in Indian politics.

She says the mainstream media has been “captured by the Modi government” and the “journalists at Republic TV are not journalists but propagandists”.

What brings her to politics? What does she think about being compared to France’s infamous queen Marie Antoinette? Why does she think intellectuals don’t make good politicians?

https://theprint.in/opinion/arvind-kejriwal-cant-absolve-himself-ethically-excise-policy-encouraged-alcohol-intake/2018285/ 

The Kejriwal government in Delhi disregarded the Directive Principles of State policy with the corrupt excise policy on liquor.

what is this liquor policy that landed both Kejriwal and his lieutenant Manish Sisodia in jail?

This article makes an attempt to decipher New Delhi excise policy 2021-2022 on liquor and its objectionable points. At the outset, it would be interesting to note that the said policy was withdrawn within one year of its existence, not by the judiciary or any central agency but by the Kejriwal government itself. Since then, doubts have been raised regarding the integrity associated with the policy.

by ASHWANI MAHAJAN

‘Billionaire Raj’ Is Pushing India Toward Autocracy https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-03-25/india-election-billionaire-raj-is-backing-modi-and-leading-to-autocracy 
The super-rich have opened their wallets to Modi, and income inequality has soared over the past d https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-03-25/india-election-billionaire-raj-is-backing-modi-and-leading-to-autocracy...While inequality has grown since the 1980s, in step with a lopsided distribution of gains from globalization across the world, Modi’s reign has spawned a tiny class of super-rich. Fewer than 10,000 individuals in a population of 920 million adults earn an average 480 million rupees ($5.7 million), more than 2,000 times the average income of $2,800. Nine out of 10 Indians earn less than the average...

A handful of tycoons — such as Mukesh Ambani, Gautam Adani and Sajjan Jindal — have entered the leagues of the world’s richest people. They did so not by putting innovative products and services in global markets, but by carving up domestic industries such as transportation, telecom, power and gas, metals, retail, media and new energy. The Modi government rewarded large businesses with tax cuts and awarded them prized monopoly assets like airports. The billionaires got juicy deals when buying bankrupt firms and lobbied — often successfully — for protectionist trade policies.

The film is yet another one based on distorting the truth to strengthen Hindu nationalist politics, with an eye on the forthcoming elections.

https://thewire.in/film/films-building-up-majoritarian-narratives-swatantraveer-savarkar 

by  Ram Puniyani

28/03/2024

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYNJHzyPYfQ  Dec 21, 2023
Subaltern Studies 2.0, edited by Milinda Banerjee and Jelle J. P. Wouters (Prickly Paradigm Press, Chicago, 2022) may be construed with some reason as an attempt to take the now defunct Sublaltern Studies project into the new, relatively uncharted territory that we know by the name of the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene is our present age, the first age when humans are no longer just biological but rather geological agents: the impress of their activity, particularly the burning of fossil fuels, is now felt in what is known to some as global warming and to others as climate change. What would a subaltern studies project for this age which is still unfolding, rather calamitously, look like? Banerjee and Wouters have together written what some will call a rather wild work and one that, in my judgment, is wondrously risk-taking and intellectual energizing. They invoke a future that would not be so dominated by humans, a future of yak democracy and fungal democracy, a future hospitable to human and non-human species alike, and one where we shall strive together to redeem ourselves from the various "falls" that have characterized the history of the last several thousand years -- the fall that led us to separate non-humans from humans, women from men (and thereby denigrate and demean them), those without speech from those with speech, and (though this is articulated in various different languages) the colonized from the colonizers

A Whistleblower on the Rot in India's Shrimp Exports https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxvDx3dKuLY The Wire Mar 27, 2024
The general manager of a shrimp packaging plant in Andhra Pradesh quit his job in order to expose the chilling deceptions and violations in the booming export industry: workers housed like animals, mistreated and underpaid, and products – later sold by Walmart, ShopRite and Hannaford – falsely labelled to cover up the use of prohibited antibiotics.

Hidden Harvest https://corpaccountabilitylab.org/hidden-harvest 

https://www.theoutlawocean.com/investigations/india-shrimp-a-growing-goliath/the-whistleblower/  Summary of Choice Canning’s Response
Choice Canning's lawyers said that the company categorically denies the allegations made by Mr. Farinella, whom they said should not be trusted due to his criminal record. They added that all company documentation about shipments correctly shows the source of the shrimp. The company never ships antibiotic shrimp to the U.S. and the FDA has never stopped their shipments due to antibiotics because the company maintains the highest of quality standards. The lawyers also said that documents from Mr. Farinella were manipulated. (Upon request, a private firm that specializes in forensic data analysis reviewed a selection of the documents, including those specifically cited by Choice Canning, and they verified that they were not manipulated in any way.) Internal company correspondence about “Oscar" shrimp does not indicate that antibiotic shrimp was shipped abroad since this shrimp is tested a second time and likely was found at that stage to be antibiotic. 

An excerpt from ‘Broken Promises: Caste, Crime and Politics in Bihar’, by Mrityunjay Sharma. https://scroll.in/article/1065424/how-did-bihar-once-the-cradle-of-civilisation-devolve-into-a-state-of-crime-poverty-and-misrule 

Bihar’s fall from a position of prosperity can be attributed to multiple factors spread over the last two centuries. However, the three most important factors for Bihar’s economic decline in the period of modern history have been listed by Arnab Mukherji and Anjan Mukherji in a 2012 paper titled “Bihar: What Went Wrong? And What Changed?”

The most recent and the larger reason for Bihar’s fall from grace is what this book is about. The period from 1990 to 2005, often dubbed as “Jungle Raj”, was a controversial period in which the government de-emphasised the state’s urgent development issues in order to pursue the ostensibly higher goal of social empowerment. Recruitments to public posts and development expenditures were highly curtailed in the belief that they would primarily benefit the upper castes. During these fifteen years, the state experienced an average annual growth rate of less than 1 per cent, while real per capita income nearly stagnated.

by Mrityunjay Sharma

26/03/2024