Ecologies

[The title is inspired by Balachandran Chullikkad’s searing poetry] I have recently been asked about why I didn’t write anything about the anniversary of the CPM-led government of Kerala.  Have also been asked why I don’t write about politics in Kerala anymore. The answer to the first is easy and painless: governments are not organic … Continue reading Losing the Soul’s Acid Tongue … Terrorist State, Unbowed Children at Kerala’s Puthvype

The Communist Manifesto had, as its object, the proclamation of the inevitable impending dissolution of modern bourgeois property. But in Russia we find, face-to-face with the rapidly flowering capitalist swindle and bourgeois property, just beginning to develop, more than half the land owned in common by the peasants. Now the question is: can the Russian … Continue reading Karl Marx in the Times of Climate Change

An earlier version of this essay was published in Outlook magazine “The young students are not interested in establishing that neoliberalism works – they’re trying to understand where markets fail and what to do about it, with an understanding that the failures are pervasive. That’s true of both micro and macroeconomics. I wouldn’t say it’s … Continue reading New Politics of Our Times and Post-Capitalist Futures

Guest post by RAJ KAITHWAR As I began to type this review, I struggled to begin with the beginning: how do I present this lively work on ‘talaab’ which does justice to its contents. It was not an easy task. Finally, I decided to begin with the end: the thoughts which clouded over me as … Continue reading Recalling ‘Aaj Bhi Khare Hain Talaab’: Raj Kaithwar

When I first encountered Enmakaje, it was already much praised in Kerala as the powerful little book that aroused the Malayali’s moral conscience towards the unspeakable tragedy wrought by the unbelievably-callous aerial spraying of the insecticide Endosulphan in north Kerala, over some of the most lush, verdant areas of the State. It was criticised by … Continue reading Take back the Poison-Rain: Ambikasutan Mangad’s Swarga

Guest post by RAJANI K. DIXIT In Vedic mythology we come across the story of sage Trita looking for fire and finding it in the head of a cow. Today we face a really big and scorching fire ensuing from bovines in India. Cows, we are told, are worshipped by Hindus and cow slaughter is therefore … Continue reading Bovines, India And Hinduism: Rajani K. Dixit

This is a Guest Post by ARUNIMA CHAKRABORTY Let’s begin with the usual: by ruing over Indian mainstream media’s overlooking of what could have been treated as more newsworthy. Today, that is, 16th of December, 2016 witnessed a bandh in southern Assam’s Barak valley protesting against the statement by the union minister of state for […]