THE news about the legislations being brought forth to abolish the University Grants Commission (UGC) and to set-up a Higher Education Commission of India (HECI) has brought into sharp focus the assault on education and, in particular, higher education, that is taking place under the Modi government.
THE spate of lynchings related to rumours of child lifting has now affected large part of the country, with new incidents being reported every day. Clearly, this is not simply the unintended consequence of WhatsApp, as the government would have us believe. Or that some tinkering with WhatsApp, of course in close “consultation” with Facebook, the owners of WhatsApp, will solve the problem. The I&B ministry’s earlier initiative of regulating news portals, targeting critical news websites is now sought to be dovetailed into this narrative.
THE Modi government is bringing in legislation in the coming monsoon session of the parliament to abolish the University Grants Commission. The UGC has two important roles at present. One is the distribution of funds to colleges and universities; this will now be handled by the ministry of human resource development. The other role is a regulatory one, which will now be taken over by a Higher Education Commission of India (HECI). This commission however will have no funds to distribute.
THE Bahujana Left Front (BLF) held ‘Mahadharnas’ at district collectorates in Telangana on June 26-27, highlighting the problems of the people that had come to light during a one-month-long house-to-house survey conducted by it in all villages in the state, and demanding that the TRS government solve them.
WE want universal social security, that is, social security for all workers, wherever they might be working.
Today a very small section of workers, mainly in the organised sector only are covered by social security benefits like provident fund, ESI, medical benefits, maternity benefit, accident compensation, gratuity, pension etc. Given the tardy enforcement mechanism, encouraged by the governments themselves, even fifty percent of the workers in the organised sector, particularly the contract workers, are also deprived of their legitimate social security benefits.
CPI(M) Polit Bureau has issued the following statement on July 4
A FIVE member constitution bench of the Supreme Court headed by the chief justice has upheld the rights of the elected state governments and reversed the decision of the Delhi High Court which had held that the lieutenant governor was the “administrative head” of Delhi. The Supreme Court bench has now correctly held that the lieutenant governor is bound by the advice of the elected council of ministers of Delhi government.
CPI(M) Polit Bureau has issued the following statements on June 30
THE Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) firmly opposes the move by the present central government to replace University Grants Commission through proposed Higher Education Commission of India (repeal of University Grants Commission Act 2018).
CPI(M) Polit Bureau has issued the following statements on June 30
THE Polit Bureau of the CPI(M) expresses its strong condemnation of this BJP government’s decision of asking the Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) to bailout the worst NPA defaulter bank, the IDBI.
A two day sit-in demonstration by AIDWA in downtown Kolkata expressed strong anger of women against TMC government. The sit-in was organized to protest atrocities against women in the state and ‘murder of democracy’ in the panchayat elections.