Umesh Joshi We are not inventors of anything. We are just readers of Marx, and political revolutionary agitators in our time. – Antonio Negri I Antonio Negri, a prominent post-war intellectual of European Marxism, died on December 16th at 90. Negri led many lives in a single lifetime— a militant theorist, a philosopher, an inmate, a… Read More Antonio Negri: The Theorist of Autonomia
Aruna Jayasena Recently surfaced news reports in the post-Aragalaya[1] context rattled off the entire state-run health service of Sri Lanka. It stated that the national health service is on the brink of collapse with imported low-quality medicines and scarcities in essential medical supplies in government hospitals nationwide. The most triggering exposé was the gradual increase of… Read More Unnoticed elephant in the Room: Heightening Taxes, Increasing Cost of Living and Brain Drain in Sri Lanka
Sukanya Maity ‘Educating from Marx: Race, Gender and Learning’ is an edited volume by Sarah Carpenter and Shahrzad Mojab published in 2011, initiating a dialogue on finding alternative epistemologies based on a Marxian framework. The work was produced during the formative years of of discussions on critical pedagogy as a possibility in academia and hence… Read More Carpenter, Sarah and Shahrzad Mojab (Eds., 2011). Educating from Marx: Race, Gender and Learning. New York: Palgrave Macmillan
Tathagat Singh In the book “Hegemony and Education Under Neoliberalism: Insights from Gramsci”, Peter Mayo presents an argument for the continued relevance of the thoughts and ideas of Antonio Gramsci, in juxtaposition with Freire, Marx and Lenin, among others, in the age of neoliberalism and intensified globalization. Mayo highlights two key factors contributing to this… Read More Mayo, Peter (2015) Hegemony and Education under Neoliberalism Insights from Gramsci, Routledge: New York
Ravi Kumar Images of masses enjoying the resources of Presidential kitchen and the lifestyle of a leader who had to flee speak a thousand words. The country, meaning the masses, have been hungry, unemployed, without fuel, not able to write exams, go to schools or have basic medicines. They said the economy collapsed. And it… Read More Sri Lanka: They took over the palace – But they lacked an alternative vision
Ravi Kumar Elections to Bihar Legislative Council (called MLC elections) are going to be held and what is intriguing is that the alliance of RJD (Rashtriya Janata Dal), Congress and CPI(ML) appears fractured. Congress is contesting alone and CPI(ML) is not contesting while CPI has got one consolation seat from RJD. It’s obvious that the… Read More What is Brewing in Bihar Politics: MLC Elections and the Future
This document is a haste attempt to somehow implement the actual agenda of the government. There is hardly any attention paid to the complexities involved in different disciplines. Social sciences and humanities or art and design or Biotechnology and Computer Sciences have their own specific disciplinary requirements. It also fails to reflect on how will it work for different levels of higher education and it is quite expectedly silent about the fellowships and scholarships as well in the ‘new’ era of education. The authors of the report have not bothered to base their proposal on any kind of actual research which was quite possible because in India online teaching-learning has been going on since 2020. There was a possibility to see how it has worked and what kind of problems have been encountered by teachers and students. There have been many media reports to this effect but a well-conceived study should have been carried to provide an insight into the problem.… Read More Blended Education or The Last Nail in the Coffin of Public Education: Preliminary Comments
The exclusion of the former Kerala Health Minister K Shailaja despite her victory in elections has been criticised from Left politicians as well as sympathisers. Should one really worry so much about the exclusion?… Read More Kerala Elections and Debates Around the Left Ministry
Ravi Kumar West Bengal slipped away from the hands of the Left as it lost the elections. Tripura, another state, decided to shift to the right parliamentarily. There were questions raised by the younger generation within the Left in Bihar during the 2020 elections. The Left in India is not in the best of its… Read More Rosa Luxemburg and the Pedagogy of Revolution: Reflections on the current impasse facing the Indian Left
Plethora of writings have emerged in a short span of time on New Education Policy approved by the Government of India. Most of them are critical of the policy because it has faltered on many accounts. Hence, it is being argued that (1) it is encouraging privatisation; (2) it is against the marginalised classes, castes… Read More New Education Policy is a neoliberal-neoconservative document: Only alternative lies in an anti-capitalist politics
The painful pictures of migrants heading home must be haunting many people. The reality is that there is no correct estimation of how many workers migrate internally in India, given the precarity and the unavailability of jobs. According to a World Bank estimate, there are nearly 40 million internal migrants. The figure was echoed in… Read More Pandemic, Migration and the Education Crisis: How Capitalism Aggravated it
रवि कुमार मैं फिर आऊँगाजब तुम्हें मेरी ज़रूरत होगी दर्द का एहसासमुझे भी होता हैमेरे सीने से भी चीख निकलती हैआँखो के पर्दे फाड़ देइतनी तेजलेकिन तुम तो बहरोके नगर के राजा होतुम्हें कैसे सुनाई देती तुम्हें महसूस होता हैजब वार होतुम्हारी दौलत परइकट्ठा किया है जिसकोतुमने ग़रीबी के खून बहा करजिससे बू आती हैउन… Read More मैं फिर आऊँगा
Walking not aloneBut with innumerable othersTalking occasionallyOf where we wereAnd where we will beWhether we will also perishLike the onewhose body could not carry him for longLike those young livesWhich were lost in transit I don’t walk aloneI walk with my comradesAll of us enslavedby the shimmer of citiesby false hopes of a better lifeby… Read More We do not walk alone
पतझड़ के मौसम ने रंग दिया इन सड़कों कोअरसों के बाद, बरसों के बादपत्तों को इतनी शांति सेसड़कों पर सोते देखाकिसी ने रौंदने की जुर्रत नहीं कीकिसी ने उन्हें बेज़ुबान नहीं समझाऔर अनचाहे रिश्तों की तरहदरकीनार नहीं कियाकौन कहता है पेड़ों से जुदा होकरउनकी हुस्न में कमी आयी होकौन कहता है उनकी दास्तानअनचाहे रिश्तों की… Read More पतझड़ से उम्मीदों का जन्म
Ahmad (name changed) has been our regular kabadiwallah (junk dealer). He would come whenever we called him to collect newspapers, empty bottles, old junk of any kind. Around two years back he took a lot of time to come and, in fact, told us that he could come only on Sunday. I was perplexed at… Read More Corona Narratives III:Enmity, Hatred and Livelihood in times of Communal Virus
the counter-narrative 