Tiruppur in Tamil Nadu and Surat in Gujarat are the preeminent textile clusters in India. In Surat there are two million workers in fifty thousand textile manufacturing units. Surat is a hub for synthetic fibres, especially sarees. At ease conversations on 27 and 28 December 2023 with a printing & dyeing factory worker in an… Read More Conversations with a textile worker in Surat / सूरत में एक कपड़ा मजदूर से बातचीत
By JACKSON DIIANI Question: Who owns the parking meters in Chicago? Answer: Morgan Stanley and the city of Abu Dhabi. In 2008, in order to offset a budget crisis, the city council leased the parking meter system to a company called Chicago Parking Meters LLC, owned by Morgan Stanley and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. Rates in most… Read More Is America like the Soviet Union in 1990?
Timothy Noah In late September 1066, William of Normandy asked his second cousin, Alan Rufus (en français: Alain le Roux), to join the Normans’ fateful war party against the Saxons. Rufus was the second son of a Breton count, at a time when the firstborn son would inherit the title and all the family wealth. It… Read More The Economists Who Found the Richest People of All Time
It has become an article of faith among many economists that China’s pro-market reforms of the 1980s and 1990s ushered in a sustained reduction in poverty. This narrative relies on figures from the World Bank, showing that over the past 40 years the number of people in China living in “extreme poverty” (less than US$1.90… Read More China’s capitalist reforms are said to have moved 800 million out of extreme poverty – new data suggests the opposite
The dark-money junktanks, and the Atlas Network, are a highly effective means of disguising and aggregating power. They are the channel through which billionaires and corporations influence politics without showing their hands, learn the most effective policies and tactics for overcoming resistance to their agenda, and then spread these around the world. This is how democracies become new… Read More What links Rishi Sunak, Javier Milei and Donald Trump? The shadowy network behind their policies
Himalayan pastoralists find they cannot access state welfare schemes, forest rights and even ration cards that they are entitled to. Some like Abdul Rashid Sheikh and Nazir Ahmed Dinda have become RTI activists in an attempt to seek accountability from the state Abdul Rashid Sheikh outside his house in Doodhpathri: ‘To build our kotha , we don’t… Read More Rights on paper, struggles on ground
NB: My one request to commentators on global affairs is this: could you please stop the journalistic shorthand ‘global north’ and ‘global south’? Or else give us a detailed list of those countries (are countries all there is?), which fall in either category? Is India ‘north’ or ‘south’? South Africa? Greece? Singapore? North Korea? Belarus?… Read More A Year in Crises
Before the port construction began, Vizhinjam was the largest and most important fishing village in Kerala. It was home to some 4,500 fishing families and several thousand boats Of all the Indian states I know, Kerala has the most active civil society organisations that flourish independently of governments and political parties. These groups work in… Read More Ramachandra Guha: Heed the words
Toby Helm A clear majority of the British public now believes Brexit has been bad for the UK economy, has driven up prices in shops, and has hampered government attempts to control immigration, according to a poll by Opinium to mark the third anniversary of the UK leaving the EU single market and customs union. The survey… Read More Brexit has completely failed for UK, say clear majority of Britons – poll
Aryaman Jain The oil corporations and the government wanted to build the world’s largest oil refinery in Ratnagiri. First they tried to build it at Nanar. The people resisted and the refinery was not built in Nanar. Then they tried to build it at Barsu-Solagaon. The people resisted and the refinery was not built in… Read More The Economy is broken. Let’s start again.
