Articles by Nirmal Kumar Chandra

The Singur "model" of industrialisation as represented by the now abandoned Tata Motors project in West Bengal has a number of regressive features. The Left Front government in West Bengal, in competition with other states for the location of Tata Motors' Nano automobile complex, fell overboard in offering subsidies to the company. Further, the government did not scrutinise the quantum of land demanded by the company, blundered by offering highly fertile land in Singur, and compounded its mistake by invoking the Land Acquisition Act, thereby compelling landowners to surrender their land at a low price. Its compensation formula was biased in favour of non-cultivating absentee landowners, and grossly unfair to the actual cultivators, bargadars and agricultural labourers, giving rise to concerted opposition from peasants and their supporters.

The Soviet impact on non-socialist countries between 1947 and 1991 was felt at three different levels. First, the US altered its own policies towards its allies radically to foster their economic development and make them less susceptible to Soviet influence. Second, countries in western Europe and east Asia borrowed some key economic ideas and instruments from USSR to hasten their economic growth. Third, direct economic aid was offered by the Soviets to non-aligned countries keen on industrialisation. This article examines the contemporary relevance of the Soviet model for non-socialist countries.

Well researched and penetrating though it is, the report on Russia prepared by McKinsey, the renowned consultants, is no more than a wish-list of foreign investors in Russia, actual and potential. Far from unlocking the forces of growth, the report's recommendations would lead to further underdevelopment and the enormous talents of the Russian people would be effectively bottled up for long years.



Nirmal Kumar Chandra DESPlTE the collapse of the USSR, Marxism remains to this day the only ideology that galvanises countless men and women cutting across the boundaries of nation, race, religion, caste, and even social class or stratum, All other ideologies operate within a narrower space. In popularity, religious fundamenta- lism may outshine Marxism in many parts of the world; hut by its very nature it lacks a universal appeal. And contemporary liberalism, the only rival to Marxism on an international scale, neither has nor needs a mass following.