Corruption: Towards a Marxist Understanding

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There is perhaps none who does not rail against corruption and its baneful impact on the country’s economy as well as on its social fabric. Governments pledge to stop and eradicate it, middle class drawing rooms discuss its baneful influence on national life, the press continues to expose its prevalence, religious leaders and moralists preach against it, while courts of law and the police express their inability to stamp it out. From the helper in a Government office to some of the top functionaries of our Governments, almost everyone seems implicated. Paul Wolfowitz, the soon-to-be-past president of the World Bank, has surely helped to underline the universality of this scourge across country and ethnicity.

The Trillionaire III: Democracy as a Weapon

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Democracy, geographic distance and demographic divergence have provided the necessary conditions for the unity of India despite its massive poverty, but these have been merely necessary conditions for its survival. Still, this does not explain the success of its economy. What does?

The Trillionaire II : Democracy and Difference

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How does one understand and explain this economic rise of India in the past decade or so?

As of now, there have been two main approaches to this question — one appreciative and right wing and the other critical and left wing.

The Trillionaire

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Last week India became the 11th trillion dollar economy in the world. News came that riding the weakening US dollar, India’s GDP had just about touched, and marginally crossed, the one trillion dollar mark. While the weakening dollar had helped quicken this achievement, it was something which would have happened sooner or later. What is really remarkable about this is that India’s economy was just US $ 462 billion in 2000 and US $ 316 billion in 1991 when the present phase of economic policies were initiated.