THE joint national convention of central trade unions and independent industrial federations held in Talkatora Stadium in the national capital on August 8, chalked out a programme of joint campaign and struggles against the anti-worker and anti-people policies and the growing authoritarian tendencies of the Modi led BJP government at the centre.
The national...
AS India marks its 70th anniversary of independence, it is necessary to recollect that the current political and social battles that are going on in our country emerge from a continuous ideological battle between three distinct visions of what should be the character of...
THE RSS-BJP game-plan in Kerala has been unfolding after the assembly election in May 2016. Having failed to make a significant impact in the election, it fell back on its longstanding method of launching violent attacks targeting CPI(M) workers all across Kerala. This new round of attacks began on the very day...
AS India observes the 70th anniversary of independence, every pillar of the independent Republican State is under threat. I When the country celebrated the 50th anniversary of independence in 1997, one of the achievements that stood out was the existence of a democratic political system in the form of parliamentary democracy. It could be legitimately said that the parliamentary democratic system, with all its imperfections, had been able to give some scope for people’s participation in...
THE shocking fact that India, an “emerging economic superpower”,was ranked 131st among 188 countries on the Human Development Index of the UN in 2015 may be brushed off on the grounds that rankings say little about absolute levels of living or changes in them. So let us take another statistic. Consider the calorie norms that constitute the official benchmark for poverty, namely 2200 calories per person per day in rural India and 2100...
INDEPENDENT India is a young country, which is 70 years old. Demographically too, ours is a young country, boasting of an average age of just 28 years. The youth of our country have many dreams about their future. Today, the generation that had fought for our independence is slowly disappearing. As a result, many among the youth do not have the direct experience of interacting with those who had fought against the British colonial rulers....
ON July 27, 2017 the Supreme Court of India passed orders that dilute the spirit and the content of the anti-dowry laws. The provision of 498A (protecting women from cruelty by husbands and relatives) was enacted in 1983 after a long struggle by the democratic women’s movement. This victory ensured that the affected women could approach the police and courts without any fear and harassment from their in-laws family and also use the...
MODI government only wants to milk the sacrifices of armed forces for political gains. It wants to draw maximum political mileage from the body-bags that come from borders. But when it comes to the wages and entitlements of the armed forces, the central government conveniently forgets its commitment to the men-in-uniform. It did not grant One Rank One Pension (OROP) to soldiers and now it is nibbling at their hard-won...
THOUSANDS of peasants and farmers across the country holding the red flags of AIKS protested in over 150 districts at the call of the Bhoomi Adhikar Andolan to hold rallies/sit-in/jail bharo on August 9, on the seven main demands of farmers. Hundreds of peasants were detained in few places. In Rajasthan, this protest was held in 15 districts. In Haryana, there was protest at Rohtak commissioner’s office.
IN a concerted attempt against Kerala, senior BJP leader and finance minister Arun Jaitley visited the state capital Thiruvananthapuram on August 6, and spread out falsehoods against the Kerala government and the CPI(M). In order to malign Kerala and its achievements for many decades, the BJP rallied RSS affiliated journalists from national media to Kerala to cover the minister’s programme. He visited the relatives of an...
THE Delhi state committee of the CPI(M), in a statement issued on August 7, has expressed shock and outrage at the death of three workers due to suffocation while manually cleaning a sewer in Jal Vihar, Lajpat Nagar. It expressed its condolence to the families of the deceased. This is the second such instance in less than a month. Earlier four workers had died in similar circumstances in Ghitorni. Both...
THE state secretary of the Goa state organizing committee of the CPI(M), Comrade Thalmann Pradeep Pereira passed away at a hospital on August 6, after a five day battle with a severe lung infection and multiple organ failure. He was 54 years old. Com Thalmann Pereira was born and brought up in the communist movement of Goa. His father Comrade Gerard Pereira, a prominent freedom fighter, was the founder of the Left trade union and communist movement in Goa. His...
