The issue of reservations in higher education in India has been a volatile issue which also has direct implications not only for public policy but also for the administration and functioning of academic institutions, not to mention the fate of a large number of students. This note is an attempt to add to the currently meagre empirical literature by analysing the available evidence on the actual extent of marginalisation and discrimination apparently faced by different categories in the population, based on the results of the most recent large National Sample Survey

A large part of the rural area around Delhi and other big cities has been converted from farmland into more pieces of attractive real estate in a portfolio of land holding. In the process, the attributes of the villages of these formerly completely rural areas are changing fast, not only in terms of ownership and cultivation patterns, but also in terms of the material means of support of the local population and their lifestyles. This also implies significant changes in the nature and options for employment for the local population.

The main issues in this year's economic strategy of the government, especially the intentions as signalled in this year's Budget proposals remain the same as that of 2004. These are employment, the agrarian crisis, nutrition and food security, education, health and social security. In each of these areas, the UPA government promised much. However, the delivery has not only been far below the promises, but in some cases even worse than the previous government.

Given the very large number of suicides by farmers in various parts of India over the last decade, there is a need to probe the issue by utilizing a data source which would provide a comprehensive, nation-wide picture. This paper is a modest attempt to fill that gap. Its basic objective is to put together, and carry out a preliminary analysis on, the secondary data that are available on farmers' suicides in the country. The paper studies, first, the magnitude and trends in farmers' suicides in India over 1997-2006; and second, the regional patterns, if any, in the incidence and trends in these suicides.

This paper discusses how a massive drive for converting agricultural land to non-agricultural use is taking place in the Third World in the recent phase of globalisation, driven chiefly by corporate capital and often by utilizing the instrument of state power. The first Section of this paper discusses the background of land transfer and the corporatisation of land with special reference to India, followed by a discussion on the nature of justice that the dispossessed receive when land is transferred to the corporate. The role of the state as the mitigator has also been discussed in this paper.

Neo-liberalism has spawned a more plausible division of the country into two ''nations'', a term that may not stand up to strict scrutiny under the canons of Marxist theory, but nonetheless contains a rich description, reminiscent of Lenin, of the Indian context. One of these two nations, the ''nation of the rich'', believes that it belongs to the first world, while the other, ''the nation of the poor'', remains stuck in the third world, experiencing agrarian crisis, unemployment, and privations on account of cuts in government expenditures, that pervade the entire third world.

This review of a book of memoirs by Ashok Mitra points out that all his endearing and contradictory personal attributes, combined with his indisputable literary flair and prodigious memory, are what make the book so absorbing and so much fun to read. The final sections of the book though do carry perhaps too much of the perception that everything - even progressive politics and literature - was better in the past.

The paper explores the controversy that has surrounded the West Bengal Government's land acquisition programme in Singur and situates it within the overall context of economic growth and transformation. It argues one of the most adversely affected groups as a result of the acquisition is relatively large farmers for whom agriculture is a source of accumulation and not livelihood and subsistence. This might explain in part why the resistance has been so strong. The paper argues that equitable and sustained growth is possible only by reducing the share of agriculture in the labour force and therefore that the West Bengal Government's strategy has to focus on maximising the generation of non-farm rural employment.

In this paper, the author discusses a distinct characteristic of the State under neo-liberalism; a transformation in its texture through a change in the nature of bureaucracy, State personnel and ''organic intellectuals''. However the social legitimacy of the State, under question as a fall out of the neo liberal economic policies, and consequently the stability of the Capitalist order will depend upon its identity of being a supra-social entity. The State will also try to regain lost social legitimacy by manufacturing some perceived enemy, in turn giving rise to jingoism, terrorism and parochial identities.

To remain confined to the ''thingness'' of economic categories without reference to the social relations of which they were simultaneously the expression, was ''vulgar economy'' according to Karl Marx. Almost a century and a half after his painstaking work had unearthed the anatomy of modern bourgeois society, we are once more in the danger of being deluged by ''vulgar economy'', manifest in the contemporary Indian discourse on the farmers' suicides, GDP growth rate and poverty reduction, etc.

One of the lesser known large dams in the Narmada valley, the Maheshwar Project, which is the first privatised hydel project in India, shows all the signs of another Enron-type fiasco in the making. But, apart from the flaws on technical and financial grounds, this time there is also added devastation produced by large scale displacement and completely inadequate rehabilitation.

There are interesting economic and sociological lessons from the recent story of the Mittal Group's bid for the French steel company Arcelor. It shows that pure arms length transactions driven by open competition and efficiency and unsullied by social and cultural differences do not exist, and that global capitalism continues to be shaped by the latter differences.

Work for raising the height of the Sardar Sarovar Dam continues apace even despite the Supreme Court's orders. The Indian state not only cannot ensure for many of its citizens their right to exist, its market-obsessed economic priorities seem even to have deprived it of the basic political sense that a democratic state should at least be seen to be caring for those at the receiving end.

The increase in central government tax revenues has been described as a victory for the Laffer Curve in India. This article examines the real reasons behind the recent increase in the tax-GDP ratio, in particular, the change in income distribution and the higher profitability of companies.

From the wreckage of a complex set of volatile and extreme political and economic changes over the past half century, the Peronist government led by Nestor Kirchner has, through its quietly progressive policies, created the basis for one of the more successful economies in Latin America at the moment.

The Budget reveals not only a complex political balancing act, but also a basic tension between sticking to a neo-liberal economic strategy and meeting the economic expectations of the mass of people, generated by the government's own promises.

In this article, the author discusses the Baran hypothesis that there cannot be a spontaneous diffusion of industrial development from the developed world to the countries of the third world under capitalism: a hypothesis apparently contradicted by the current pattern of development visible at least in Asia. His analysis resolves this contradiction by using an inherent but less talked about 'contradictions to capitalism' which is the role of a stable medium of wealth or in the present context, a leading currency. He explains why the current pattern of growth and technology diffusion in the newly industrialising countries cannot be sustained given the necessary pattern of their interaction with the leading capitalist country.

Instead of recognising the real issues and creating the basis for a genuine national debate on airport modernisation, most of the mainstream media covering the recent strike by airport employees has chosen to obfuscate and suppress the vital information which matters as much for the future of the country.

Of all the various arguments that have been advanced regarding the war on terror, those referring to ''the clash of civilisations'', which argues that there is an innate civilisational conflict between the values of ''western democracy'' and Islam, must be among the most foolish. Given USA's earlier courtships with most of the current 'terror' elements, this proposition seems ridiculous.