Keyword: privatisation

The Privatization of Yoga: Will India Succeed in Keeping Yoga in the Public Domain?

Picture: Graham King David Bollier - It is a sign of the predatory nature of markets today that a tradition that goes back 4,500 years now needs to affirmatively defend itself as a common legacy of humankind. Yes, the latest endangered resource is…. yoga. Yoga was developed in India as a physical and spiritual practice for everyone. The breathing known as pranayama is perhaps the most elemental aspect of human existence. But wouldn’t you know it…. all sorts of scheming entrepreneurs now want to convert yoga...

Parastatals between a Rock and a Hard Place: From Privatisation to Commercialisation and Back

Picture: SACSIS Leonard Gentle - The revelation that ex-SAA CEO, Khaya Ngqula is being chased by the board of SAA to recover some R31m expenditure has made headlines recently. In the same week that this news broke, a Deloitte’s survey of the top 200 South African company CEOs found that while they were comfortable with the government’s predictable economic policy, “The single biggest standout concern, for all industries, was corruption and its impact on doing business” (Hugh Harrison of Deloitte,...

Vandana Shiva on Gandhi for Today's World

Picture: Franziska Seel David Barsamian - Vandana Shiva is an internationally renowned voice for sustainable development and social justice.  She is a physicist, scholar, political activist, and feminist, and recipient of the Right Livelihood Award, the alternative Nobel Prize. She is also director of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy in New Delhi. Author of many books, her latest are Earth Democracy and Soil Not Oil. She spoke in New Delhi with David Barsamian, founder of...

Trailer: The Big Sellout

According to California Newsreel, this hard-hitting documentary, The Big Sellout, challenges current economic orthodoxy in contending that the dogmatic claims of the international business establishment for neo-liberal development policies are not supported by modern economic science. More importantly, it dramatically demonstrates how the implementation of these policies is having disastrous consequences for millions of ordinary people around the globe. Traveling throughout both the...

Should South Africa Have a Department of Public Enterprises?

Picture: Paul Keller Ebrahim-Khalil Hassen - Public Enterprises Minister, Barbara Hogan's comment that public enterprises requiring massive bailouts will be considered for sale, has elicited a polarised response. On the one hand, the statement has found support as an expression of the self-evident. Taxpayer's money should not be used to subsidise loss making enterprises, because it is a waste of taxpayer money, the argument goes. On the other hand, the African National Congress (ANC) has indicated that the statement does not reflect...

Why the World Water Forum is a Sham

Picture: Nitot and Bobby FDC Jeff Conant - Behind the World Water Forum's public posture as a trade expo and an educational exchange among water advocates lies a labyrinth of political intrigue and corporate cronyism. Corporate interests that make up the World Water Council are in constant contact with the World Bank and other financial institutions; each Forum pretends to be a quasi-United Nations event, to the extent of issuing a Ministerial Statement at the Forum's close promoting global policy approaches to water and sanitation....