THE current upsurge in prices in India is led by food prices. In July 2023 while retail inflation was 7.44 per cent (over July of the previous year), food price inflation, which covers all food items including foodgrains, vegetables, milk products and such like, was 11.5 per cent. Food price inflation came down a little in August to around 10 per cent, largely because of some supply management measures adopted by the government relating to vegetables...
AS one of the outcomes of the recently concluded G20 Summit in New Delhi, a new Biofuels Alliance was announced, with India, Brazil, the US and other countries taking the lead towards a programme of action aiming to increase the uptake of sustainable biofuels especially in the transport sector. Here in India, much has been made of this initiative as another triumph showcasing the growing global leadership of the present government, and also as a step towards...
A SIGNIFICANT change in the composition of global trade and investment perhaps marks the process of current phase of globalisation. Two decades before, north-north trade was around 60 per cent of the global trade, north-south trade accounted around 30 per cent and south-south trade was roughly 10 per cent of global trade, which is now almost equally distributed between these three directions of trade. Also in terms of foreign...
THE BJP election manifesto of 2014 started with a section entitled “Attend the Imminent” and the very first item in that section was price rise, where it accused the outgoing UPA government of threatening the food security of millions by having ushered in “runaway food inflation”. Five years later, in 2019, the party’s manifesto was strangely silent on the issue of price rise and the word “inflation” did not figure in the document at all. Was this a case of the party...
ON September 12, 2023, the Assam chapter of the Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM), a nationwide coalition of farmers’ organisations, organised a state-level convention in Guwahati. This convention was a crucial component of the nationwide campaign aimed at safeguarding agriculture, farmers, and agricultural land while preparing for the next phase of the farmers movement.
THE Polit Bureau of the CPI(M) expresses grief at the passing away of Comrade Kanai Banerjee, veteran trade union leader and former member of the Central Committee of the Party. Kanai Banerjee joined the freedom movement and later the Communist Party in his student days. He became a railway employee and made a lifelong contribution to the development of the railway trade union movement. He became a central office-bearer of the Centre of...
LET’S begin with a truism: the Russian invasion of Ukraine will be ended either by defeat of one side or by a diplomatic settlement. That much at least should be beyond debate. A defeat is simply not on the cards, since the west will not allow Ukraine to be totally defeated, and Russia – a major nuclear power – cannot be defeated without the prospect of the introduction of nuclear weapons into the conflict. Since, a defeat of one side or the other is simply not...
IN the season of summits, one summit went unnoticed. It is the G-77 Summit organised in Havana, Cuba. G-77 as a group was founded in 1964, by 77 non-aligned nations. India is one of the founding members of this group. Currently the group has 134 developing countries as members and after the UN, it is the largest representative forum of the global south. The black-out of all news of such an important group clearly establishes the elitist bias. Not...
THE Telangana Peasants Armed Struggle anniversary was successfully observed throughout the state from September 10 to 17. Rallies were organised from martyrs' stupas in some districts. CPI(M) Polit Bureau members Brinda Karat and BV Raghavulu, state secretary T Veerabhadram and other secretariat and state committee members addressed meetings at various places in the state on the occasion.
THE CBI and the ED are covering up crimes instead of arresting the main culprits. It has been 10 years since the Saradha chit fund scam happened. Eight years have passed since the Narada scam. Still the culprits have not been prosecuted. In other cases too, dilly-dallying is going on. Even the court is being forced to take this dismal failure seriously. To protest against this, the CPI(M) West Bengal state committee has decided to organise a...
