This article critically examines India’s nationwide rollout of E20 petrol—a fuel blend of 80% petrol and 20% ethanol—framed as a green transition but marked by structural contradictions and political capture. While the policy promises reduced fossil fuel dependence and enhanced energy security, its hasty and opaque implementation has exposed ecological, economic, and democratic fault lines. Large-scale ethanol production, dependent on sugarcane and food grains, risks intensifying food-versus-fuel conflicts, groundwater depletion, monoculture expansion, and contested lifecycle emissions, undermining its environmental rationale. At the same time, the accelerated timeline has disproportionately benefited politically connected firms, notably those linked to Union Minister Nitin Gadkari’s family, fuelling charges of dynastic capitalism and greenwashed cronyism. Consumers face reduced mileage, vehicle compatibility issues, and higher costs, while farmers encounter persistent inequities despite promised gains. Unlike Brazil’s gradual, infrastructure-supported ethanol transition, India’s compressed shift neglects readiness, transparency, and public consultation. By prioritizing centralized agro-industrial biofuels over decentralized renewables such as solar microgrids and electric mobility, E20 risks locking India into short-term, carbon-intensive fixes while delaying structural decarbonization. The study argues that the E20 rollout exemplifies the mirage of green developmentalism—where sustainability discourse legitimizes elite enrichment and policy capture, displacing burdens onto citizens, farmers, and ecosystems.
Category Archives: Journal
CONVERGENCE TO PRAXIS
This journal tries to demolish the administrative boundaries of academic disciplinary technology by amalgamating all the so-called “subjects” by condemning the objectification, subjectification and subjection.
It strives to reach the vanishing point of theory and praxis. Thus, instead of so-called “inter-disciplinary studies”, it emphasizes on the convergence of earthian knowledges and praxiologies. The journal attempts to achieve this end by means of dialogue without manipulation in the context of a participatory, local-resource based, low-energy efficient, small-scale, self-reliant, partyless, moneyless, decentralized democracy. As this journal is against the academiocratic elitism and patron-client relationship, it maintains the Copyleft Writers’ Movement and follows the Creative Commons License.
The Pharmakon of Coca Cola Capitalism: Paradigm of Thirst
This paper synthesizes a sustained conversation into a coherent, comprehensive, and rigorous research paper that maps the concept of Coca-Cola capitalism to concrete historical and contemporary case studies in India. The analysis traces the genealogy of the term, situates it within scholarship on globalization and cultural imperialism, and offers a detailed historical narrative on Coca-Cola’s presence in India: its arrival (1950), exit (1977) amid FERA (Foreign Exchange Regulation Act) disputes, the growth of “indigenous” soft-drink alternatives, and Coca-Cola’s re-entry after economic liberalization (1993). The paper then examines the contemporary re-territorialization of the Coca-Cola model under Indian oligarchic capital—focusing on Reliance Consumer Products (Isha Ambani’s corporate sphere) and its acquisition and relaunch of legacy brands such as Campa and minority stakes in heritage regional companies (e.g., Sosyo). Ecological footprints of cold-drink production (water use, agricultural inputs, packaging waste, energy and emissions, and local social-ecological conflicts) are analyzed, alongside health hazards of carbonated soft drinks, including obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular risks. A critical examination of corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives, such as the Piramal Foundation’s Sarvajal RO water ATMs in the context of the Digwal case-study, highlights hypocritical dimensions in water governance amid industrial extraction. The paper argues that Reliance’s strategy constitutes a domesticated variant of Coca-Cola capitalism—what the paper terms Ambani-Cola capitalism—which mechanically reproduces branding, distribution, and extraction logics while reorienting profit streams to domestic oligopoly. Drawing on Zizekian ideology critique, Lacanian psychoanalysis, and the Derridean interpretation of pharmakon, the analysis reveals the ideological surplus in commodified consumption. Policy implications and recommendations for environmental governance, community rights, competition policy, and corporate accountability are offered.
Why Today’s India Cannot Deny Its Undeclared Emergency
This article examines the concept of an “undeclared emergency” in contemporary India under Narendra Modi’s regime, situating it against the backdrop of declared Emergency (1975–77). While declared Emergency was openly authoritarian and time-bound, today’s context is marked by a much more diffuse and insidious erosion of democratic institutions, legal safeguards, and civil liberties—achieved without formal proclamation. The article highlights continuities and ruptures across political, economic, and social dimensions: from the manipulation of electoral processes, enabling economic bankruptcies to enrich a select few, the subversion of the judiciary to the deployment of majoritarian nationalism and the criminalization of dissent. Unlike the past, the current phase relies on bureaucratic coercion, surveillance, and ideological consolidation to create a climate of permanent insecurity. The article argues that this “undeclared emergency” represents not merely a suspension of democracy but its reconstitution into a new authoritarian normal, where legality, legitimacy, and violence intertwine to foreclose dissent while maintaining the simulated facade of popular consent.
Press Freedom In India: A Declining Trajectory
This paper traces the sharp decline of press freedom in India under the Modi government (2014–2025), situating it within a broader democratic backslide marked by surveillance, censorship, impunity, and institutional capture. Drawing on global indices such as RSF’s World Press Freedom Index, CPJ’s Impunity Index, and the Atlas of Impunity, it highlights how violence against journalists, draconian laws like the UAPA, ownership consolidation, internet shutdowns, and defamation SLAPPs have reshaped India’s media landscape. Through emblematic cases—from the murders of Gauri Lankesh and Shujaat Bukhari to the arrests of Aasif Sultan, Fahad Shah, and Prabir Purkayastha, as well as the harassment of comedians like Munawar Faruqui—the study shows how dissent is criminalized. The paper also examines digital censorship, such as the blocking of BBC’s Modi documentary, Poonam Agarwal’s YouTube ban, and Ajit Anjum’s harassment, alongside the NewsClick raids and Elon Musk’s lawsuit against India’s censorship regime. It argues that the erosion of press freedom mirrors larger systemic crises of impunity, corporate-state nexus, and authoritarian populism, threatening not only media independence but India’s democratic ethos itself.
Shut Down Arms Factories to Stop Wars: Dismantling the Global War Profiteering Machine
The global arms industry—worth nearly $95 billion annually—is both a driver of human suffering and a silent engine of ecological collapse. Wars claim over 2,000 lives daily, displace millions, and shatter societies, while leaving behind poisoned aquifers, fragmented habitats, and toxic soils contaminated by unexploded ordnance and chemical residues. Arms manufacturers like Lockheed Martin and RTX thrive on this devastation, rewarded by soaring stock prices whenever conflict erupts, while shadowy brokers such as Viktor Bout and Aboubakar Hima profit from prolonging wars that ravage both communities and ecosystems. India exemplifies this global dilemma, channeling vast sums into defense while underfunding water, health, education, and environmental resilience. The campaign “Shut Down Arms Factories to Stop Wars” demands dismantling this war economy by halting weapons production, regulating brokers with ecological due diligence, mandating transparency of emissions and toxic legacies, and reallocating resources toward human well-being and planetary stewardship. Peace cannot be defined as the mere absence of war—it must mean fertile soils, clean water, healthy bodies, and thriving ecosystems within Earth’s limits. Yet even the green transition carries risks: critical mineral extraction for renewables, if pursued without justice, threatens to replicate the violence and exploitation of fossil fuel regimes. A just future requires confronting militarism, curbing extractivism, and investing in life over destruction. Only by linking disarmament with ecological restoration can humanity secure genuine peace within planetary boundaries.
Endangered Gender: Half The Sky Under The BJP’s Patriarchal Misogyny
India’s gender inequality persists as a contradiction between constitutional promises and patriarchal realities, evidenced by its 2025 Global Gender Gap Index (GGGI) rank of 131 out of 148 countries (score: 0.644). This article examines three core issues—educational disparities, women’s malnutrition, and female foeticide—challenging overstated claims of literacy parity (98% women vs. 99% men). Drawing on Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) 2023–24, it reveals a 12.6-point literacy gap (87.2% men vs. 74.6% women), malnutrition’s dual burden (18.7% underweight, 24% overweight per NFHS-5), and ~307,000 annual foeticides (2013–2017) skewing sex ratios (108.9). These intersect with low economic participation (28.3%) and caste divides, worsened by data opacity (jugupsā). Amartya Sen’s capabilities approach frames these as entitlement failures, while feminist intersectionality highlights caste and regional disparities. Comparisons with Bangladesh, Sweden, and Pakistan underscore policy gaps. The dystopian film Matrubhoomi (2003) illustrates gender imbalance’s consequences. Recommendations emphasize targeted literacy drives, nutrition fortification, foeticide enforcement, and transparent data to foster equity.
Fortifying India: Reading Between the Lines of the 2025 Defence Budget
In the shadow of escalating geopolitical tensions, India’s defense strategy for the fiscal year 2025-26, with a staggering Rs 681,210 crore budget (13.45% of the Union Budget), perpetuates a militaristic paradigm that prioritizes arms over human and ecological well-being. This allocation, blending indigenous manufacturing (e.g., Tejas, BrahMos) with heavy reliance on imports (e.g., Rafale, S-400), is marred by historical corruption scandals (Bofors, Coffin, Rafale) and shrouded covert operations via entities like the Special Frontier Force (SFF) and Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). Meanwhile, external debt servicing at USD 682.2 billion (19.2% of GDP) drains fiscal resources, exacerbating economic distress marked by bankruptcies, rising poverty, and wealth concentration among crony elites. Findings reveal that this defense-centric approach ignores profound ecological devastation, agrarian crises, and hunger epidemics, diverting public taxes to fuel a predatory military-industrial complex. War-mongering, akin to manufactured religious pogroms by the current political executive, fosters a false nationalistic fervor, sustaining a debt-ridden global techno-economic system that benefits tycoons while neglecting climate resilience, public health, and equitable flourishing.
Of Size and Suffering: Challenging the Illusion of “Progress”
India’s emergence as the world’s fourth-largest economy masks deep ethical and structural crises. This article critiques the country’s development model, which prioritizes GDP growth while perpetuating informal labour, systemic inequality, environmental degradation, and authoritarian neoliberal governance. It highlights the disjunction between economic scale and human well-being, exposing how neoliberal globalization erodes local economies, social cohesion, and democratic participation. Persistent gender and social inequities, ecological injustices, and increasing external debt trap India in a cycle of “pre-debtor” capitalism, undermining sovereignty and welfare. Drawing on critical political economy, postcolonial theory, and alternative frameworks such as degrowth and localization, the article calls for transcending growth-centric paradigms to pursue justice, sustainability, and pluralistic development rooted in dignity and ecological balance.
The “Charitable” Sovereign: PM CARES, Philanthrocapitalism, and the Erosion of Democratic Accountability
The Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations (PM CARES) Fund, established in March 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, was designed as a citizen-driven mechanism for emergency relief. However, its formation and functioning reveal profound contradictions between its stated ideals and actual governance. This article critically examines PM CARES as an emblem of philanthrocapitalism, executive populism, and corporate-state entanglement. Drawing on theoretical frameworks such as Foucault’s governmentality, Agamben’s state of exception, Fraser’s critique of progressive neoliberalism, and Chatterjee’s political society, the analysis illustrates how PM CARES reconfigures welfare into a spectacle of personalized legitimacy, evading democratic accountability. The case of Mr. Ajay Piramal’s reported donations—alongside alleged regulatory favors and the questionable DHFL acquisition—demonstrates how philanthropy can become a strategic substitute for justice and a vehicle for crony capitalism. Ultimately, PM CARES signifies a broader ideological reconfiguration in India’s political economy: the transformation of crisis governance into a post-democratic regime characterized by moralized coercion, symbolic aid, and technocratic opacity.
Gandhi-Washed “Vaisnava” Capitalism: The Piramal Paradox Or Hypocrisy?
The article critiques Ajay Piramal’s business practices, particularly his acquisition of Dewan Housing Finance Corporation Limited (DHFL), alleging the possible dramaturgy of Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava Dharma to mask crony capitalism. It highlights allegations of financial misconduct, insider trading, environmental violations, and political shielding by the BJP, drawing parallels with broader systemic issues like the Adani-Hindenburg dispute. The piece contrasts Piramal’s actions with Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy of trusteeship (with critical reservations) and austerity, arguing that his corporate social responsibility (CSR) and philanthropy are superficial, serving as “Gandhi-washing” to obscure profit-driven motives. It frames Piramal’s practices as emblematic of India’s crony-capitalist regime, questioning the integrity of regulatory bodies like SEBI and advocating for vigilance against corporate-political collusion, while noting that these claims remain under judicial scrutiny and are far from being conclusive/definitive. However, the same doesn’t stop one from analyzing the neoliberal face of capitalism in the contemporary India.
