By Dr Shahid Siddiqui

‘Schools reproduce class relations by reinforcing rather than reducing class-based differential access to social and cultural capital’ — Pierre Bourdieu HUMAN history is replete with the struggles of different interest groups with each other. Marx views history as a constant class struggle where different classes are engaged in tactics to acquire, sustain and resist power.

A more recent interpretation is offered by Bourdieu, a French thinker, who believes that the constant human struggle is for social distinction which establishes itself through culture and education.

By Aqil Shah

THE conventional wisdom of the day is that the army is beating a retreat to the barracks. The prime minister keeps thanking the generals for withdrawing army officers from civilian institutions, a process he reportedly considers conducive to creating a ‘balanced’ civil-military relationship.

But recalibrating civil-military relations would take more than recalling military officers seconded to the civil bureaucracy. It would require that the two spheres be made impervious to undue interference from each other.

By Masud Mufti

PEOPLE are aghast at the dramatic turns regarding the restoration of the judges. But I am not. They are seeing for the first time what I am for the second.

In 1971, I first saw, on the soil of East Pakistan, a confrontation between the same protagonists with the same mindset over the same issue that the residual Pakistan is seeing today.

To eradicate poverty is in the heart of trade union agenda but the situation is worsening Md Mojibur Rahman Bhuiyan

Trade unions all over the world are celebrating the May Day this year in a globalized economy with a call to eradicate poverty from the world and to create decent jobs. Globalisation continuous to be the number one challenge facing the trade union movement Worldwide.

By PAUL KRUGMAN

During Barack Obama’s Sunday appearance on Fox News, the interviewer asked him for an example of “a hot-button issue where you would be willing to buck the Democratic Party line” and say that Republicans have the better idea.
Mr. Obama’s answer was puzzling because he gave credit where it isn’t due — and thereby undermined what could be a very effective Democratic line of argument.

Maureen Dowd

Barack Obama has spent his life, and campaign, trying not to be the Angry Black Man.

Early on, he wrote in “Dreams From My Father,” he discerned the benefits of playing against the ’60s stereotype of black militancy.

Lin’s appointment thus marks a major break with political tradition. Hitherto there have been hardly any appointments of Chinese to senior positions in the major international Organizations Martin Jacques IN June, Justin Lin Yifu, a Beijing professor, will take up the post of chief economist at the World Bank. Nothing could be a clearer sign of the times.

This is the number two job in one of the two major international economic institutions, the other being the International Monetary Fund. Earlier, incumbents have included the Nobel prize winner Joseph Stiglitz, the former US treasury secretary Lawrence Summers and the UK’s Nicholas Stern.

Twenty thousand desperate textile workers in Bangladesh went on the rampage, giving rise to fears of wider instability,
since the garment industry accounts for three-fourths of the country''s exports, writes Kaushik Basu, Professor of Economics, Cornell University

The world economy has many problems but none more pressing than what is happening to food prices. There have been food riots in Haiti, the Philippines, Ethiopia, Indonesia and several other nations.

JS Raman

There was a time when evenings witnessed repetition of the same routine in every Indian middle-class home. The family would settle down to watch its favourite soap on television or the weekend feature films or any of those programmes on the forthcoming elections.

By Tion Kwa

High energy prices pose a monumental challenge to economic growth. Everyone knows this. But high food prices stir more visceral fears. The concern today is that the world faces a serious crisis as a result of accelerating prices of food staples.

Dr Manzur Ejaz

Rising commodity prices have left fragile developing economies neither here nor there. Developing countries pressured or advised by the World Bank, IMF and the US, opened their markets to attract foreign investments. For most of them, real foreign investments have remained illusive because it was a zero sum game to start with. However, global speculative capitalist forces, unhindered by national restrictions, have started destroying them at an accelerated speed.

Praveen Swami

With its spectacular high-rise buildings, magnificent museums and art galleries, Philadelphia represents the finest face of the United States. Another America is hidden less than an hour’s walk away. Polished glass and steel give way to run-down homes, and the silence on the streets is punctuated, every so often, by the wail of police sirens.

Dr HA Rizvi

Lack of clarity on the status of Musharraf and the judges issue, as well as indecision on economic and security policies raises doubts about whether or not societal forces will continue to maintain a friendly posture towards the government in the next six months

M.S. Swaminathan

Mark Dummett and Alastair Lawson

Dr Manzur Ejaz

The Maoist movement has shown that sometimes a movement believing in a violent revolution is the only way to usher in a contemporary democracy

Mao Zedong must be smiling over what happened in the Nepalese elections the other day. Even Mao’s countrymen may be wondering how some people can follow their prophet’s outdated revolutionary prescriptions and change the course of their fate.

Simon Jenkins

COME on, confess it, you have not enjoyed a story so much in years. A round-the-world marathon with all-in wrestling, kick boxing, rugby tackling and sanctimonious steeplechasing, staged free of charge in the streets of London, Paris and San Francisco by the International Olympics Committee — and before the Beijing games have even started. To add to the joy, nobody gets hurt except politicians.

A dramatic rise in the worldwide cost of food is provoking riots throughout the Third World where millions more of the world''s most vulnerable people are facing starvation Paul Vallely

A dramatic rise in the worldwide cost of food is provoking riots throughout the Third World where millions more of the world''s most vulnerable people are facing starvation as food shortages grow and cereal prices soar. It threatens to become the biggest crisis of the 21st century.