Description

First published by Monthly Review Press, N.Y.

“An in-depth study of the Indian economy in the post-Covid situation and its place in global finance…. [with] both a strong conceptual apparatus and a solid empirical base…. I would recommend the book strongly to anybody interested in understanding the tentacles that bind developing countries to US capital, and how to move on to a path of democratic economic and social development.” — Amiya Kumar Bagchi, Emeritus Professor, Institute of Development Studies, Kolkata

“This sharply and clearly written book examines India’s cruel, inhuman response to COVID-19 through the lens of the nation’s ever-growing dependence upon, and subservience to, foreign capital.” — Michael D. Yates, Author, Can the Working Class Change the World?
Summary:

With the advent of COVID-19, India’s rulers imposed the world’s most stringent lockdown on an already depressed economy, dealing a body blow to the majority of India’s billion-plus population. Yet the Indian government’s spending to cushion the lockdown’s economic impact ranked among the world’s lowest in GDP terms, resulting in unprecedented unemployment and hardship.

Crisis and Predation shows how this tight-fistedness stems from the fact that global financial interests oppose any sizeable expansion of public spending by India, and that Indian rulers readily adhere to their guidance. The authors reveal that global investors and a handful of top Indian corporate groups actually benefit from the resulting demand depression: armed with funds, they are picking up valuable assets at distress prices. Meanwhile, under the banner of reviving private investment, India’s rulers have planned giant privatizations, and drastically revised laws concerning industrial labour, the peasantry, and the environment—in favor of large capital.

And yet, this book contends, India could defy the pressures of global finance in order to address the basic needs of its people. But this would require shedding reliance on foreign capital flows, and taking a course of democratic national development. This, then, is a course not for India’s ruling classes, but for its people to struggle for.