Dear friend, 

For some weeks, the centre of all our political debates is Indo-US Nuclear Deal. Though the Govt. was trying to implement it first without much debates and transparency, because of the interferences from different walks of the society, the Govt has been forced to account for it and hence now there are various agitations and campaigns from all over the country to force the Govt. to withdraw from the deal. But ignoring all these oppositions and neglecting serious social economic political and environmental upsets the deal causes, the UPA Govt. under the leadership of Dr. Manmohan Singh, is venturing to implement the deal. It's quite obvious that the deal will bring about many negative and destructive consequences in various dimensions. Comparing to these consequences no argument to propose the deal will stand.

By Jatin Desai

Pakistan’s results have fulfilled the aspirations of the people of Pakistan. President Musharraf’s politics was around three A’s i.e. America, Army and Allah and the Pakistani voters have rejected the three A’s. The drubbing of Musharraf backed Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid-e-Azam), popularly known as King’s party, was on expected lines.

Shaheed Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples’ Party (PPP), as expected, came out as the single largest party. But, to form a Government has to depend on former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif led Pakistan Muslim League (N) and Afsandyar Vali Khan led Awami National Party (ANP). They have joined hands together and will soon form a new government.

by Aparna Pallavi

March 15, 2008
http://www.indiatogether.org

A two-day seminar held recently in Mumbai brought together policy makers, bureaucrats, social workers, farmers, journalists, activists and researchers. Scrutinising farm policy in depth, they said that policy had failed to address some of the main challenges, reports Aparna Pallavi.

15 March 2008 - The recently declared Farmers Policy of the central government came up for strong criticism from all sides during a seminar held on 9-10 February in Mumbai. Speakers from various fields - policy makers, bureaucrats, social workers, farmers, journalists, activists and researchers - opined that the policy failed to address some of the main challenges before Indian farmers at this point of time. Focus on Global South, an NGO, organised the event.

Monthly e-newsletter from Focus on the Global South, India


Content summary:

Is the world on the verge of an economic crisis? For sure, the US economy seems to be heading towards one. If a US recession happens, analysts predict that it could lead to a global recession owing to the unprecedented level of integration that has been fostered by corporate led globalization. Walden Bello in ‘Capitalism in an Apocalyptic Mood’ writes that the specter that haunts the USA is Japan’s experience of virtually zero growth per annum in the nineties and early part of this decade. There are some sectors of the Indian economy such as Information Technology (due to its close links with the US economy) that will surely take a beating, but more damaging could be possible impacts on the financial (damage control measures are already on at one of India’s largest private sector banks – ICICI) and manufacturing sectors and the resultant impacts on working classes across the world.