Lal Khan

Gone are the days when on the budget day almost everything came to a halt on the streets, with people glued to the TV screens or radio sets in anticipation of some major concession for the working masses. After all in those days budgets did matter. That is now a bygone era, with the masses […]

European politics and society have been going through turmoil and instability since the financial crash of 2008. The bloody crisis in Ukraine and Crimea in the east and the rise of ultra-right outfits in certain countries of Western Europe are a reflection of the turmoil and instability that have become a norm in Europe for […]

These conditions have resulted in more despair, disillusionment and disdain amongst the exploited classes leading to a certain regression of the political consciousness amongst large swathes of the workers and the poor in India. This reminds one of the situation in Russia in the first decade of the last century. Leon Trotsky wrote in 1909: […]

The not so surprising landslide electoral victory of the reactionary Hindu fundamentalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the meteoric rise of the religious/nationalist chauvinist Narendera Modi in the 2014 elections laid bare the deep social and political malaise that has set in in India, the largest capitalist democracy in the world. Congress was decimated and […]

With two-thirds of its work force in the rural sector, Bangladesh’s agriculture contributes just 19 percent to its GDP. Sixty-six percent of exports are from the garment industry that makes it the third largest clothes exporting country in the world. It is perhaps the cheapest and most profitable place for garment manufacturers. However, the conditions […]

On Easter day this April, the Lahore Waste Management Company (LWMC) placed an advertisement in mainstream newspapers to congratulate the Christian community in their celebration of their most sacred religious festival. However, the LWMC also advised Lahorites: “Today, on the occasion of Easter, almost 6,000 employees of the LWMC are on vacation. The people in […]

The fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the capitalist degeneration of the Chinese bureaucracy led to mass euphoria and ridicule of Marxism by a sea of imperialist experts, intellectuals and politicians howling against socialism and communism. What is far worse is how quickly the former sycophants and disciples of […]

The shambolic display of disconnecting the supply of electricity to the Presidency, the Prime Minister’s Secretariat, the Supreme Court and Parliament was mere theatrics for the many and numerous talk shows that have mushroomed in the country. It was nothing more than naked desperation on the part of the bizarre Minister of State for Water […]

South Asia is well known for celebrating landmark dates and there are many. However, the Saur Revolution that took place on April 27, 1978 in Afghanistan has been feloniously erased from the annals of regional history. Ever since the dramatic events that led to this revolution and the radical and far-reaching reforms in its aftermath, […]

India is being hyped as being very modern. Yet, in the midst of the towering buildings and corporate plazas, there are huge swathes of ghettos breeding with intense poverty and misery where human beings are forced to live in animal conditions with unhygienic and filthy dwellings. The artificial glitter and facade of modernity fails to […]