Articles by: Rahul Varman

Indian Telecom’s Spectacular Rise and the Nature of Monopoly Capital in India

Indian Telecom’s Spectacular Rise and the Nature of Monopoly Capital in India

India’s private corporate sector is more prominent today than at any time in the past. Its chieftains are listed among the richest persons in the world. The Indian government’s growth plans now explicitly centre on the country’s largest fi rms, with the aim of creating a few ‘national champions’ capable of competing globally. A research report regarding the house of[Read More…]

by 12/05/2023 Comments are Disabled India
Public Private Partnerships – Subsidy and Impunity for Private Corporations

Public Private Partnerships – Subsidy and Impunity for Private Corporations

Delhi Airport Metro as a Case Study   According to the currently dominant ideology, the private sector is more competent, efficient, and technologically capable than the public sector, and thus public-private partnerships save public money. The World Bank says: Public-private partnerships (PPPs) can be a tool to get more quality infrastructure services to more people. When designed well and implemented[Read More…]

by 09/01/2022 Comments are Disabled India
The Larger Issues Underlying the Claim of Cairn Energy on Air India

The Larger Issues Underlying the Claim of Cairn Energy on Air India

Amid the sweeping pandemic and the health emergency across the country, some may have missed the headline that Cairn Energy, a leading UK-based oil and gas exploration corporation, had filed a suit in New York to claim the international assets of Air India, the State-owned airline of India. The basis of Cairn’s demand is that it claims that the Indian[Read More…]

by 21/06/2021 Comments are Disabled India
The Horror that is India

The Horror that is India

Why Is the Ruling Establishment Simply Incapable of Responding Any Other Way to the Pandemic? On the morning of 27th April I got a phone call from the youngest son of a trade union veteran of Kanpur, that everyone in his large household has been down with COVID-19 (henceforth Covid)-like symptoms. Though the condition of others was stable, his father’s oxygen[Read More…]

by 12/05/2021 Comments are Disabled India
Recent Amazon Revelations: What do they tell us about the ongoing farm protests?

Recent Amazon Revelations: What do they tell us about the ongoing farm protests?

Amid the continuing farm protests, with the farmers completing almost three months camping at the borders of Delhi, the international news agency Reuters published a report based on multiple internal documents of Amazon regarding its India operations over the last few years.[2] Amazon is a global e-commerce giant, and it has already achieved close to $10 billion annual sales (value of[Read More…]

by 04/03/2021 Comments are Disabled India
Making Sense of the Present Moment of ‘Onlinisation’ of Teaching

Making Sense of the Present Moment of ‘Onlinisation’ of Teaching

Along with COVID 19 and its associated terminology, we are currently being educated in a new jargon regarding one of the oldest occupations, namely, teaching. We now are told of online learning, e-teaching, edtech, edutech, smartphones in the new role of teacher, and so on and so forth. India is a large country with a very young population, where almost[Read More…]

by 24/12/2020 Comments are Disabled Life/Philosophy
Labour in the Time of Corona

Labour in the Time of Corona

Back in the headlines Even as we were getting used to a new set of technical terms and headlines, from the brand new name of the virus to social distancing to quarantine, suddenly there reappeared a word that we all assumed had receded for ever from the front page, namely, labour. When is the last that we heard of ‘labour’ attracting[Read More…]

by 29/05/2020 Comments are Disabled India
Citizenship and the Nation of the Rich in India

Citizenship and the Nation of the Rich in India

The following piece was initially drafted before the nationwide alarm and lockdown over Covid-19. However, the description it provides here of the ‘nation of the rich’ complements the description and pictures we now see of the nation of destituted labourers struggling to reach their homes in the villages. — Editor I. Introduction The idea of being a citizen perhaps has[Read More…]

by 14/04/2020 Comments are Disabled India
‘Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century’ – A Review

‘Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century’ – A Review

Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century by John Smith, Monthly Review Press, 2016. Even in the days of Brexit and Donald Trump, the dominant theme of the corporate media remains that the rising tide of ‘globalisation’ will lift all boats. Some go so far as to claim that the UK and the US are not for globalisation because it  favours the developing nations.[Read More…]

by 10/10/2018 3 comments Book Review
Behind The Hype Of E-Commerce

Behind The Hype Of E-Commerce

One is at a loss for words to describe the rise and rise of e-commerce in the eyes of the ruling and middle classes as well as the mainstream media. Not a day passes without the sector capturing the headlines and prominent space. Words like e-commerce, start-ups, and digital India, and brands like Flipkart, Amazon, Ola, and Uber have become[Read More…]

by 18/01/2017 1 comment India
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