Pritam Singh | Oxford Brookes University (original) (raw)
Papers by Pritam Singh
The Tribune Oct 28 , 2023
With not even Europe fully supporting the US-UK stance on Israel, these two powers stand isolated... more With not even Europe fully supporting the US-UK stance on Israel, these two powers stand isolated globally.
Chasing Dignity , 2023
Chasing Dignity is a beautifully written novel. Though it is his first, Rashpal Sahota has made a... more Chasing Dignity is a beautifully written novel. Though it is his first, Rashpal Sahota has made a noticeable entry into the world of English fiction written by Punjabis, especially Sikhs. Through the story of different phases of the life of Jaggi, the main character, Rashpal has written a social history of contemporary Punjab in a fictionalised form by giving centrality to the caste system as it operates in Punjab, especially among the Sikhs in both the rural and urban settings. What is most admirable is that the novel does not present the caste system as either ever present in a rigid fashion or as a vanishing practice. What emerges are the complexities and contradictions of the caste system both through its presence and absence in varied forms. Several characters both from the so-called lower castes as well as the so-called upper castes defy it and those defiances are beautifully captured. It is a depiction of the beauty of those defiances coexisting with the violence-mainly verbal but sometimes physical-of the system that lends this novel a distinctive character. The novel ends with the depiction of some forms of low-level casteism (mainly in the form of caste biases) migrating to the West along with the migrants. So, the journey to chase dignity continues.
Note: Though I believe in removing all possible restriction to dissemination of knowledge, I feel... more Note: Though I believe in removing all possible restriction to dissemination of knowledge, I feel compelled to request, due to the incomplete nature of this article, that any one feeling the need to quote any part of this article should first consult me.
A personal narrative and reflection on a period during my undergraduate studies when I was arrest... more A personal narrative and reflection on a period during my undergraduate studies when I was arrested, tortured and narrowly escaped death for my sympathies with the Maoist/Naxalite movement in India but without any involvement in any act of violence.
Millennial Asia, 2021
The three new farm laws promulgated by the Government of India in 2020 (now repealed) as agricult... more The three new farm laws promulgated by the Government of India in 2020 (now repealed) as agricultural marketing reforms, with the claim that they were aimed at expanding farmers’ marketing choices and increasing their incomes, have triggered massive protests by farmers. These protests have crystallized around two key demands: first, repeal the laws and second, make the minimum support price (MSP) for procuring farmers’ produce a legal right. Given that discussions between the government and farmers’ organizations continue to be at an impasse, it is critical to understand the arguments over the laws and the MSP, and the implications of these arguments for the agrarian future of India.
Capitalism Nature Socialism, 2021
ABSTRACT Recent laws introduced by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government aim to central... more ABSTRACT Recent laws introduced by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government aim to centralise India’s federal structure, for the goal of a unified (Hindu) national market, and to corporatise its agro-food system at the expense of smallholder farming and small-scale trade. These laws are being challenged by mass mobilisations led by farmers’ unions from northwestern states—once-booming agricultural regions where, in recent decades and in the aftershocks of the Green Revolution, agrarian suicides have become endemic. The roots of this catastrophe are rapid marketisation in the 1960s (installing monocropping dependent on petrochemical inputs, destroying local agroecology) followed by post-1980s neoliberalism (with highly inequitable contract farming, alongside defunding of public infrastructure). Farmers and labourers now face interwoven crises of social reproduction—ecological depletion, precarisation, and chronic indebtedness, with no post-agricultural future in sight. The new laws claim to redress this by employing populist rhetoric against “exploitative middlemen”; in reality, markets are re-regulated in favour of large export-oriented agribusiness, thereby endangering food security, livelihoods and climate. The laws also herald digitalisation in agriculture and retail—further subsuming smallholders into productivist, financialised and outsourced logics. Their promulgation has triggered substantial FDI from global Big Tech, including Facebook and Google, aided by Indian conglomerates with close ties to the BJP built during PM Narendra Modi’s prior tenure as Chief Minister of Gujarat. This paper details the above and concludes by contextualising the ongoing protest movement. We focus on southern Punjab, a region that has suffered acute crises of health and ecology, as well as violent political conflict and state repression. Decades of left-wing rural union activity in this region, fighting debt and dispossession as well as in support of anticaste land struggles, have laid the organisational groundwork for hopeful new political trajectories, including potentials for grassroots red-green coalitions centring women and landless labourers.
Covid-19 Pandemic and Economic Development, 2021
All economic crises present challenges for economic theory and policy. The Great Depression of 19... more All economic crises present challenges for economic theory and policy. The Great Depression of 1929–1933 exposed the fundamental weakness of the neoclassical economic theory that had been almost unquestioned since the 1870s neoclassical counter-revolution against classical economics (Bharadwaj in Classical Political Economy and Rise to Dominance of Supply and Demand Theories. Sangam, Delhi, 1986). The neoclassical doctrine, with its reliance upon the market as automatic stabiliser, collapsed amidst the massive disequilibrium in labour, product and money markets witnessed during the Great Depression. This gave rise to Keynesian economics supporting state intervention in recession-hit economies (Keynes in The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. Macmillan, London, 1936) and initiated the birth of heterodox approaches to economic theory and welfare state policies (Foldvary in Beyond Neo-Classical Economics: Heterodox Approaches to Economic Theory. Cheltenham, Edward Elgar, 1996; Singh and Bhusal in Economic and Political Weekly XLIX:111–118, 2014). The ‘stagflation’ of the late 1960s and early 1970s, which involved high inflation caused partially by the global oil price rise of 1973, together with high levels of unemployment, made visible the flaws in the Keynesian economic framework’s assumption that a certain degree of unemployment can keep inflation low. The crisis of Keynesianism gave birth to monetarist explanations of inflation based on money supply and pushed economics in the direction of neoliberalism, which reached its height during the Thatcher/Reagan era of state withdrawal in the 1980s. Neoliberalism claimed its final triumph with the collapse of Soviet-type Stalinist economies in the late 1980s (Niskanen in Reaganomics: An Insider's Account of the Policies and the People. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1988; Skidelsky in Thatcherism. Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1989; Radice in Capital and Class 38:277–287, 2014). The triumph of neoliberalism collapsed with the 2007–2009 global financial crisis (Singh in Economic and Political Weekly, 2008a), but pro-neoliberal elites very quickly recreated it as austerity economics (Konzelmann in Cambridge Journal of Economics 38:701–741, 2014; Singh and Bhusal in Economic and Political Weekly XLIX:111–118, 2014).
Economic and Political Weekly, Jan 15, 2011
Economic and Political Weekly, Oct 22, 1983
Economic and Political Weekly, Sep 8, 1984
Economic and Political Weekly, Sep 26, 2014
Economic and Political Weekly, Sep 15, 2014
Journal of Entrepreneurship & Organization Management, 2014
Contemporary South Asia, 2015
broader contestations over control of urban land. Moreover, the author’s multiple typologies of u... more broader contestations over control of urban land. Moreover, the author’s multiple typologies of urban ecology – emergency ecology, ecologies of invasion, ecologies of reform – require further explanation in order to carry greater analytical traction. Nonetheless, Reigning the River makes an exciting and incisive contribution to the growing literature on urban natures, ‘crisis cities’ and development in the global south.
Commonwealth & Comparative Politics, 2014
The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with p... more The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.
Economic and Political Weekly, 1985
This article follows up my earlier article on AIR and Doordarshan coverage of Punjab after Operat... more This article follows up my earlier article on AIR and Doordarshan coverage of Punjab after Operation Bluestar army action in 1984 and further covers the central government media coverage of anti-Sikh genocidal violence in Delhi and other north Indian towns
Economic and Political Weekly, 1984
... agriculture minister and a senior Akali leader, along with 11 other well-known Sikhs of the c... more ... agriculture minister and a senior Akali leader, along with 11 other well-known Sikhs of the city had met the then Governor BD Pande and had pleaded with him in a written memorandum that the body of Sant Bhindranwale be handed over to the 'Sikh Panth' for cremation ...
Economic and Political Weekly, 1985
Marxism in Punjab Pritam Singh WHEN we make an attempt to evaluate Marxism as an ideology/social... more Marxism in Punjab Pritam Singh WHEN we make an attempt to evaluate Marxism as an ideology/social philosophy/ world outlook and as a political tendency in Punjab, the following seem to emerge as some of the most prominent features:
India Studies in Business and Economics, 2016
Situating the argument in the larger theoretical framework of the impact of external factors in s... more Situating the argument in the larger theoretical framework of the impact of external factors in shaping the development of a country or a region, this article explores the impact of Centre–State relations in India on shaping Punjab’s agrarian-oriented development pattern. It links this agrarian-oriented development pattern in post-colonial Punjab with the colonial era development pattern in Punjab that was based on the development of canal colonies in Punjab as the core of that development strategy. To show the continuity between the colonial era development strategy and the post-colonial development strategy, the article focuses on the Green Revolution as the central component in the shaping of agrarian-oriented development pattern in Punjab. The article concludes with arguing for restructuring Centre–State relations to give a push to decentralised development strategy in India that can allow Punjab to shape its own development pattern in consonance with its own resource endowment and its own transitional path to a non-agrarian future.
The Tribune Oct 28 , 2023
With not even Europe fully supporting the US-UK stance on Israel, these two powers stand isolated... more With not even Europe fully supporting the US-UK stance on Israel, these two powers stand isolated globally.
Chasing Dignity , 2023
Chasing Dignity is a beautifully written novel. Though it is his first, Rashpal Sahota has made a... more Chasing Dignity is a beautifully written novel. Though it is his first, Rashpal Sahota has made a noticeable entry into the world of English fiction written by Punjabis, especially Sikhs. Through the story of different phases of the life of Jaggi, the main character, Rashpal has written a social history of contemporary Punjab in a fictionalised form by giving centrality to the caste system as it operates in Punjab, especially among the Sikhs in both the rural and urban settings. What is most admirable is that the novel does not present the caste system as either ever present in a rigid fashion or as a vanishing practice. What emerges are the complexities and contradictions of the caste system both through its presence and absence in varied forms. Several characters both from the so-called lower castes as well as the so-called upper castes defy it and those defiances are beautifully captured. It is a depiction of the beauty of those defiances coexisting with the violence-mainly verbal but sometimes physical-of the system that lends this novel a distinctive character. The novel ends with the depiction of some forms of low-level casteism (mainly in the form of caste biases) migrating to the West along with the migrants. So, the journey to chase dignity continues.
Note: Though I believe in removing all possible restriction to dissemination of knowledge, I feel... more Note: Though I believe in removing all possible restriction to dissemination of knowledge, I feel compelled to request, due to the incomplete nature of this article, that any one feeling the need to quote any part of this article should first consult me.
A personal narrative and reflection on a period during my undergraduate studies when I was arrest... more A personal narrative and reflection on a period during my undergraduate studies when I was arrested, tortured and narrowly escaped death for my sympathies with the Maoist/Naxalite movement in India but without any involvement in any act of violence.
Millennial Asia, 2021
The three new farm laws promulgated by the Government of India in 2020 (now repealed) as agricult... more The three new farm laws promulgated by the Government of India in 2020 (now repealed) as agricultural marketing reforms, with the claim that they were aimed at expanding farmers’ marketing choices and increasing their incomes, have triggered massive protests by farmers. These protests have crystallized around two key demands: first, repeal the laws and second, make the minimum support price (MSP) for procuring farmers’ produce a legal right. Given that discussions between the government and farmers’ organizations continue to be at an impasse, it is critical to understand the arguments over the laws and the MSP, and the implications of these arguments for the agrarian future of India.
Capitalism Nature Socialism, 2021
ABSTRACT Recent laws introduced by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government aim to central... more ABSTRACT Recent laws introduced by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government aim to centralise India’s federal structure, for the goal of a unified (Hindu) national market, and to corporatise its agro-food system at the expense of smallholder farming and small-scale trade. These laws are being challenged by mass mobilisations led by farmers’ unions from northwestern states—once-booming agricultural regions where, in recent decades and in the aftershocks of the Green Revolution, agrarian suicides have become endemic. The roots of this catastrophe are rapid marketisation in the 1960s (installing monocropping dependent on petrochemical inputs, destroying local agroecology) followed by post-1980s neoliberalism (with highly inequitable contract farming, alongside defunding of public infrastructure). Farmers and labourers now face interwoven crises of social reproduction—ecological depletion, precarisation, and chronic indebtedness, with no post-agricultural future in sight. The new laws claim to redress this by employing populist rhetoric against “exploitative middlemen”; in reality, markets are re-regulated in favour of large export-oriented agribusiness, thereby endangering food security, livelihoods and climate. The laws also herald digitalisation in agriculture and retail—further subsuming smallholders into productivist, financialised and outsourced logics. Their promulgation has triggered substantial FDI from global Big Tech, including Facebook and Google, aided by Indian conglomerates with close ties to the BJP built during PM Narendra Modi’s prior tenure as Chief Minister of Gujarat. This paper details the above and concludes by contextualising the ongoing protest movement. We focus on southern Punjab, a region that has suffered acute crises of health and ecology, as well as violent political conflict and state repression. Decades of left-wing rural union activity in this region, fighting debt and dispossession as well as in support of anticaste land struggles, have laid the organisational groundwork for hopeful new political trajectories, including potentials for grassroots red-green coalitions centring women and landless labourers.
Covid-19 Pandemic and Economic Development, 2021
All economic crises present challenges for economic theory and policy. The Great Depression of 19... more All economic crises present challenges for economic theory and policy. The Great Depression of 1929–1933 exposed the fundamental weakness of the neoclassical economic theory that had been almost unquestioned since the 1870s neoclassical counter-revolution against classical economics (Bharadwaj in Classical Political Economy and Rise to Dominance of Supply and Demand Theories. Sangam, Delhi, 1986). The neoclassical doctrine, with its reliance upon the market as automatic stabiliser, collapsed amidst the massive disequilibrium in labour, product and money markets witnessed during the Great Depression. This gave rise to Keynesian economics supporting state intervention in recession-hit economies (Keynes in The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. Macmillan, London, 1936) and initiated the birth of heterodox approaches to economic theory and welfare state policies (Foldvary in Beyond Neo-Classical Economics: Heterodox Approaches to Economic Theory. Cheltenham, Edward Elgar, 1996; Singh and Bhusal in Economic and Political Weekly XLIX:111–118, 2014). The ‘stagflation’ of the late 1960s and early 1970s, which involved high inflation caused partially by the global oil price rise of 1973, together with high levels of unemployment, made visible the flaws in the Keynesian economic framework’s assumption that a certain degree of unemployment can keep inflation low. The crisis of Keynesianism gave birth to monetarist explanations of inflation based on money supply and pushed economics in the direction of neoliberalism, which reached its height during the Thatcher/Reagan era of state withdrawal in the 1980s. Neoliberalism claimed its final triumph with the collapse of Soviet-type Stalinist economies in the late 1980s (Niskanen in Reaganomics: An Insider's Account of the Policies and the People. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1988; Skidelsky in Thatcherism. Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1989; Radice in Capital and Class 38:277–287, 2014). The triumph of neoliberalism collapsed with the 2007–2009 global financial crisis (Singh in Economic and Political Weekly, 2008a), but pro-neoliberal elites very quickly recreated it as austerity economics (Konzelmann in Cambridge Journal of Economics 38:701–741, 2014; Singh and Bhusal in Economic and Political Weekly XLIX:111–118, 2014).
Economic and Political Weekly, Jan 15, 2011
Economic and Political Weekly, Oct 22, 1983
Economic and Political Weekly, Sep 8, 1984
Economic and Political Weekly, Sep 26, 2014
Economic and Political Weekly, Sep 15, 2014
Journal of Entrepreneurship & Organization Management, 2014
Contemporary South Asia, 2015
broader contestations over control of urban land. Moreover, the author’s multiple typologies of u... more broader contestations over control of urban land. Moreover, the author’s multiple typologies of urban ecology – emergency ecology, ecologies of invasion, ecologies of reform – require further explanation in order to carry greater analytical traction. Nonetheless, Reigning the River makes an exciting and incisive contribution to the growing literature on urban natures, ‘crisis cities’ and development in the global south.
Commonwealth & Comparative Politics, 2014
The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with p... more The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use of the Content. This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.
Economic and Political Weekly, 1985
This article follows up my earlier article on AIR and Doordarshan coverage of Punjab after Operat... more This article follows up my earlier article on AIR and Doordarshan coverage of Punjab after Operation Bluestar army action in 1984 and further covers the central government media coverage of anti-Sikh genocidal violence in Delhi and other north Indian towns
Economic and Political Weekly, 1984
... agriculture minister and a senior Akali leader, along with 11 other well-known Sikhs of the c... more ... agriculture minister and a senior Akali leader, along with 11 other well-known Sikhs of the city had met the then Governor BD Pande and had pleaded with him in a written memorandum that the body of Sant Bhindranwale be handed over to the 'Sikh Panth' for cremation ...
Economic and Political Weekly, 1985
Marxism in Punjab Pritam Singh WHEN we make an attempt to evaluate Marxism as an ideology/social... more Marxism in Punjab Pritam Singh WHEN we make an attempt to evaluate Marxism as an ideology/social philosophy/ world outlook and as a political tendency in Punjab, the following seem to emerge as some of the most prominent features:
India Studies in Business and Economics, 2016
Situating the argument in the larger theoretical framework of the impact of external factors in s... more Situating the argument in the larger theoretical framework of the impact of external factors in shaping the development of a country or a region, this article explores the impact of Centre–State relations in India on shaping Punjab’s agrarian-oriented development pattern. It links this agrarian-oriented development pattern in post-colonial Punjab with the colonial era development pattern in Punjab that was based on the development of canal colonies in Punjab as the core of that development strategy. To show the continuity between the colonial era development strategy and the post-colonial development strategy, the article focuses on the Green Revolution as the central component in the shaping of agrarian-oriented development pattern in Punjab. The article concludes with arguing for restructuring Centre–State relations to give a push to decentralised development strategy in India that can allow Punjab to shape its own development pattern in consonance with its own resource endowment and its own transitional path to a non-agrarian future.