Suchergebnisse

This article begins with Samir Amin's family background to understand his development as a fiercely committed Marxist who throughout his life was dedicated to changing the world. All the disappointments and defeats of the cause he espoused only sharpened his determination. The article reviews Amin's professional career in economic planning and some of the key concepts that he elaborated in the interest of social change—including eurocentrism, the law of worldwide value, and maldevelopment—before turning to his concern with political Islam, which he saw as an accessory to imperialism.

West Bengal, in 1951, was ranked second in the country, with a literacy level of 24.0 per cent, though far behind Kerala with a literacy level of 47.18 per cent. From the very beginning there was an elitist bias in educational planning, so that primary education was badly neglected, and so subsequently West Bengal began to slide in relation to states like Kerala, Maharashtra, Mizoram or Goa. Unfortunately, the elitist bias also persisted during the Left Front rule. As a result, by the time of Census 2011, the literacy level of West Bengal had slid down so far that it was barely above the national average. At the same time, the small state of Tripura, also ruled by a Left Front government, coming up from far behind had caught up with and then had overtaken West Bengal, and was only a little behind Kerala, the most literate state in India. Although this article is supposed to be an account of the state of education in West Bengal since independence it concentrates essentially on the primary school sector, because that is the foundation of all further education. It refers to the Bhabatosh Datta Commission on higher education whose recommendations still remain valid and unfortunately unimplemented.

ABSTRACTThis article critiques the liberal and state‐centred view of morality and governance as applied to immigrants. It argues that the alternative perspective provided by some moral philosophers and political theorists can be combined with analysis of the current global economic and political order to outline a framework for protecting the welfare and human rights of the immigrants. It also argues that this framework brings out the commonality of interests of workers in host countries and immigrants in re‐empowering the state to provide for the comprehensive social security that the neoliberal state has trashed.