General Election in India : Narendra Modi and the BJP bludgeoned their way to election victory
GHOSH Jayati
Narendra Modi and the BJP bludgeoned their way to election victory The sheer aggression of the BJP campaign, the threats to the Election Commission – Modi made sure India felt his presence.
This general election in India was almost a test case : just as advertising can make people want a particular brand of soft drink or breakfast cereal, can a massively funded and aggressive media campaign make people choose a particular leader ? The answer, sadly, seems to be yes.
It is hard to speak of « one » Indian electorate – there is so much variation across each state – but both local and national issues have always been significant. The BJP's campaign this time was different, seeking to present one man as the national leader and creating an unprecedented media blitz around him for nearly a year, so that voters simply got used to the idea and even started believing the hype, through sheer repetition of the images and slogans.
What do international arbitration institutions have in common with Domino’s Pizza, public transport operators, pawnbrokers, discount supermarkets, property auctioneers, and opposition politicians? Answer: all have profited from the global economic downturn. 
ANN ARBOR—Income inequality has been rising rapidly in China and now surpasses that of the U.S. by a large margin, University of Michigan researchers say.
À une poignée de semaines des élections européennes, L’Humanité publie une double page de points de vue sur le Front de gauche [1]. Si l’on se fie à ces propos, l’espérance de vie dudit Front est bien courte.
This text proposes a series of concrete alternatives to counter the current crisis shaking Europe. It presents nineteen immediate measures that should be taken vis-à-vis finance in general and the banking sector in particular. In addition to these measures, it proposes to socialise the banking and insurance sectors, and to place them under citizen control. It then examines ten measures to be taken to reverse the crisis in a way that will be favourable to the vast majority of people. 1. Stopping austerity plans; 2. Repudiating all illegitimate, unsustainable, odious, and illegal public debt; 3. Cancelling all illegitimate and illegal private debt; 4. Increasing the resources of public authorities; 5. Decreasing inequalities by establishing fiscal justice; 6. Setting up legitimate government borrowing; 7. Developing and extending public services; 8. Strengthening the pension system based on intergenerational solidarity; 9. Radically decreasing working hours to guarantee jobs for everyone, and adopting an income policy that will bring about social justice; 10. Questioning the basis of the euro and taking action to build a different Europe, which would mean replacing the current treaties based on a true democratic process involving all the peoples of Europe. These are the propositions the CADTM is putting forward for discussion and debate.
On the eve of April 25, Portuguese society was smouldering from contradictions accumulated in half a century of dictatorship. At the heart of these contradictions was a war that lasted thirteen years, to hold on to the African colonies of Angola, Mozambique, Guinea, Cape Verde and Sao Tome and Principe. This conflict conditioned the whole of national life, because of the social suffering caused by the mobilization of two hundred thousand men, a tenth of the working population (a human cost equivalent to twice that of Vietnam), because of the wave of migration driven by hunger and the war, and because of the impossibility of a military solution, the only one contemplated by the regime.
Le scrutin législatif en cours revêt une importance toute particulière pour l’Inde, le favori des sondages promouvant un nationalisme agressif d’extrême droite, racial et religieux.
1) The last municipal elections represent a new worsening of the political balance of forces for the left and the labour movement. 150 cities of more than 10,000 inhabitants swung from SP or CP-led to the right or far right.
Le CADTM tient à apporter son soutien au peuple grec qui s’oppose aux diktats de la Troïka (Commission européenne, Banque centrale européenne, FMI). Les nouveaux prêts accordés en 2014 sont liés à un paquet de mesures antisociales qui vont dégrader un peu plus les conditions de vie de la majorité de la population grecque.
Last year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change started the publication of its 5th Assessment Report (or AR5), initially showing the work by the Working Group I, which deals with the physical basis of climate change. Now, the AR5 process continued with the publication of the “Summary for Policy Makers” by the Working Group II, concerning “impacts, adaptation and vulnerability.”
As the International Monetary Fund (IMF) prepares for its Spring meetings, new research reveals that the number of conditions it attaches to its loans are rising – and they continue to be linked to harsh austerity measures and interfere in sensitive policy areas. Conditionally Yours: An analysis of the policy conditions attached to IMF loans is the latest in a series of reports on the IMF’s lending practices produced by the European Network on Debt and Development (Eurodad) over the past decade.
Les élections présidentielles du 25 mai ne stabiliseront pas le pays. Il faut que la population de toutes les régions soit saisie des grands enjeux et détermine ses droit sociaux et nationaux sur la base de l'indépendance du pays.
Le premier tour des élections municipales a rendu son verdict et il est national. Le Parti socialiste et donc le gouvernement et le président de la République subissent la sanction qu’ils espéraient éviter. L’UMP ne capitalise pas franchement sur cet échec. Mais le Front national en fait son miel. Au-delà de la victoire de Steeve Briois dès le premier tour et de ses bons résultats dans plusieurs autres villes, le FN a déjà fait élire 456 représentants dans les conseils municipaux…
“Here in Europe, the European Central Bank is not allowed to lend money to member States, so the monopoly for lending money to the public powers in the Euro zone is left in the hands of the private bankers who take full advantage of this in order to set the kind of interest rates that benefit them the most. In other words, they currently lend money to the BCE at 0.25% and then proceed to lend Italy money at 4%. When things are going badly for Italy, they lend us money at 6-7%. The citizens have to take the initiative when it comes to conducting a “debt audit”, asking the right questions and coming up with the answers themselves, without being too concerned about the fact that there is a major economics and finance expert.”