THE countrywide general strike on September 2 called by the Central Trade Unions and independent national federations received massive response from the workers all over the country. Crores of workers employed in almost all the sectors of the economy participated in this strike. Police was used on the workers in several states. The Trinamool government in West Bengal used the brutal force of its police as well as its goons to physically attack the workers on strike. The workers bravely fought back this terror and participated in the strike.

COMPARED to the grandiose vision and slogans set out in his first speech at the Red Fort on Independence Day last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a defensive speech on August 15 this year.  Actually, Modi has much to be defensive about. His speech was mostly about what has been accomplished by the government regarding the announcements made in the last Red Fort address.  But he had to labour hard and in vain to prove the point that much has been done.

THE monsoon session of parliament has been stalled ever since it began on July 21.  The main reason for this is the Modi government’s obduracy in refusing to even recognise that there are serious charges against a union minister and against the two chief ministers of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. After refusing to respond to the opposition demand that action be taken in these three cases, throughout the prime minister has remained silent. He refuses to take a stand and his ministers have been trying to hurl counter-charges against Congress chief ministers.

THE execution of Yakub Memon is a miscarriage of justice. There is no other way to describe the hanging of a man when there were strong mitigating circumstances to commute his sentence. Yakub Memon was certainly guilty of a crime – involvement in the conspiracy which led to the heinous bomb blasts in Mumbai which took the lives of 257 persons. But his role and the nature of the offence did not warrant capital punishment. The ends of justice would have been served if he had been awarded a life sentence, just as the ten others whose death sentences were commuted to life.

PRIME Minister Alexis Tsipras and the Syriza-led government of Greece have abjectly capitulated to the diktats of the Eurozone-IMF bosses. This is a tragedy for the Greek people. The formation of the Syriza government had raised hopes that the hateful austerity measures imposed by Troika, consisting of the European Central Bank, the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund, would be ended and national sovereignty defended. These hopes have been cruelly dashed in the short space of six months.