IN yet another brutal incident in Kerala, RSS-BJP goons killed an active CITU worker in Pathanamthitta district on the night of February 16th. Thirty-four-year-old Jithin Shaji was stabbed to death while he was trying to mediate and sort out issues following a scuffle between two groups in Perunad Madathumoozhiyil. The next day, police arrested eight active RSS workers in connection with the murder.In a planned attack by an eight-member group of RSS workers, a sharp weapon was used to fatally stab Jithin.

PRIME Minister Modi’s visit to the White House on February 13 was meant to illustrate how close Modi was to his friend, Donald Trump, and to bask over the photo-op that it presented. Instead, what Modi’s short visit to Washington underlined was the subaltern status that India has been reduced to under Modi’s watch.There was no tearing hurry for the Indian prime minister to have an official meeting with President Trump.

“WHERE the mind is without fear and the head is held high…” Rabindranath Tagore's vision of free knowledge is contradicted by the current education system, which under capitalist rule, controls knowledge to benefit the ruling class. The National Education Policy (NEP), the RSS model, excludes the poor and indoctrinates others to serve corporates and Hindutva ideological interests.The state of education in Bengal paints a grim picture. The closure of schools is rampant, and the student-teacher ratios are incredibly poor.

THE Budget Session of Parliament began on January 31 with President Droupadi Murmu's address to a joint sitting of both the Houses. Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented the Union Budget for 2025-26 on February 1. Overall, the budget was disappointing as people had high expectations from it. There is nothing in the budget for the general public. The expectation that the budget would strengthen the public sector and help generate more employment in the country has not materialised. There are no measures aimed at curbing price rise.

GEORG Lukacs, the renowned Marxist philosopher had once remarked that “even the worst socialism was better than the best capitalism”. That remark made in 1969 and repeated in 1971, no doubt on the basis of Lukacs’ perception of actually existing socialism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe with which he was familiar, had been treated sceptically even in Western Left circles at the time.