THE Modi government has been undermining all the institutions under the Constitution and denuding them of their essence. This was on display in the event to observe the 28th foundation day of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC). The anniversary meeting was attended by both the prime minister, Narendra Modi and home minister Amit Shah. The prime minister, in his speech, gave his own slanted version of how human rights should be viewed. He said: “Some people have started...
UNLIKE in the advanced capitalist countries, a reduction in employment opportunities in India takes the form not of a larger proportion of the work-force being shut out of employment, but of almost everyone having lesser number of days of work. This is a reflection of the fact that only a tiny segment of the work-force is employed on a full-time basis. Most are either self-employed, like peasants or shop-keepers, where many more or fewer family-members...
THE Modi government has created an artificial electricity shortage during the festival season, which normally sees a high electricity demand. With the opening of the economy post-Covid-19 second wave, power demands were expected to pick up in October. This, coupled with the festival season, would obviously see a large up-tick of power consumption. Currently, there is a shortfall during...
NO worse example of the brazen callousness of the Modi-Shah government has been witnessed in the last seven years. A full 10 days after the inhuman and brutal massacre of farmers at Lakhimpur Kheri in Uttar Pradesh, which stunned the nation on October 3, the notorious union minister of state for home affairs, Ajay Mishra Teni, has neither been sacked from the Modi cabinet nor has he been arrested. He is now known all over the country...
DURING the pandemic when the plight and sufferings of migrant workers had turned into the greatest human disaster, the Modi regime has, without any remorse, repealed the Inter-State Migrant Workmen (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Service) Act, 1979 (ISMW Act, 1979) by “amalgamating” it with the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020 (OSHWC Code). This is not an amalgamation in the ordinary sense of the term as the...
SITARAM Yechury, general secretary of the CPI(M), whilst placing the decisions of the Polit Bureau meeting in a press conference on October 11, demanded sacking of the union minister Ajay Mishra, and stringent action against his son, Ashish Mishra who is an accused in the killing of farmers in Lakhimpur Kheri in UP. The Polit Bureau meeting took place in Delhi on October 9-10.
THE viral images and videos of a photographer jumping on the body of a farmer who was shot dead by the police epitomise the politics of hate the RSS-BJP have systematically injected in Assam. It looked as if mere killing of the farmers could not satiate the hatred indoctrinated among the RSS-BJP followers over the years.
THE Modi government seeks to deny its role in the massive shortfall of electricity generation that has hit the country. Currently, severe power cuts are extending to many hours in Rajasthan, Jharkhand, Bihar and Punjab, while many others, including Maharashtra, Kerala and Delhi, are staring at impending blackouts. According to CEA (October 6th report), this failure has led to 16 power...
THE future of Afghanistan will be determined not only in Kabul, where the Taliban is now firmly in power but also in places such as the Wakhan Corridor. A narrow strip of land that runs along the northern fringe of Afghanistan, the Corridor was formed in 1893 as a buffer between the Tsarist empire of Russia and the British empire of India. It is sparsely populated, its roughly 15,000 Wakhi (Kyrgyz) residents reliant upon...
THE Goods and Services Taxation regime is antithetical to the very idea of cooperative federalism. The rightwing is conducting an all-out campaign to impose one tax across the country ignoring the need for diversity and local autonomy. The report submitted by the Fifteenth Finance Commission points out that in the year 2018-19, 62.7 per cent of the total tax revenue is collected by the union government. But when it comes to expenditure, 62.4 per cent of the total...
