Bücher veröffentlicht von Leftword Books

The principle of fiscal federalism enshrined in India's Constitution is under severe strain today. This book is a key addition to understanding the challenges involved. The authors capture the implications of the abolition of the Planning Commission, the introduction of the controversial Goods and Services Tax regime, and formulation of Terms of Reference of the 15th Finance Commission. These include the increase in vertical fiscal inequity, distortion of fairness in inter-State distribution, and erosion of policy autonomy at the level of the States. Kerala has seen a unique effort to advance the devolution process from the State level to the panchayats and municipalities. Besides taking the path-breaking decision to devolve 40 per cent of State plan funds to local government institutions, the Kerala experiment involved a mass campaign to build capacity of local government. Kerala's Finance Minister Thomas Isaac and his co-authors argue that protecting and enhancing devolution is essential for strengthening popular participation in development decision-making. This book is being published at a time when some of the State finance ministers have been leading a campaign on the need for revisiting certain Terms of Reference of the 15th Finance Commission. This involvement in a movement to reverse the tendency to erode both the fiscal and policy autonomy of the State gives the book an edge and urgency that will place it at the centre of the debate on the attack on Indian federalism.

This book locates India's flourishing internet within a complex 24-year history that has seen an unprecedented re-organization of social and political life. Three essays provide independent perspectives on a common area of inquiry, an ra that witnessed a fundamental mutation of the State, its mechanisms of planning and governance, the public domain and the everyday, all mediated by digital technology, all impacting its internet. Bringing the essays together is a common timeline, which begins in the late 1970s, includes such landmarks as the Information Technology Act, the much-discussed Aadhaar biometric identification programme, the chequered career of social media, and the widespread use of internet shutdowns.

Ruth First, born in 1925, held multiple roles during the struggles of her time as a communist militant, journalist, researcher and leading intellectual in South Africa. Until her assassination in 1982, she was a committed anti-apartheid activist and was one of the many defendants of the Treason Trial and imprisoned without charge in solitary confinement for 117 days in 1963. Ruth First on a range of topics including the landmark 1956 Women's March, the workings of the apartheid state, and the history of anti-apartheid armed struggle against this state, introduced by an essay on First's life and legacy, written by Vashna Jagarnath, a labour activist who works in the office of the general secretary of the National Union of Metal workers of South Africa (NUMSA).

Dear, dear, when the soft-hearts get hold of thing like that missionary''s contribution they completely lose their tranquility they speak profanely and reproach Heaven for allowing such a find to live. Meaning me . They think it irregular. They go shuddering around, brooding over the reduction of that Congo population from 25,000,000 to 15,000,000 in the twenty years of my administration ; then they burst out and call me the King with Ten Million Murders on his Soul. They call me a ''record''. - From King Leopold''s Soliloquy