ONE of the major planks of the BJP campaign in 2014 was that the economy had been reduced to shambles under the UPA - growth was flagging, the rupee had lost ground against the dollar, exports were sluggish and loans from banks to industry were increasingly turning bad. Modi, it was declared, would come and wave his magic wand and turn all this around. India would become the fastest growing economy in the world, the rupee would gain ground against other currencies, exports would boom and investors, both foreign and domestic, flock to make India a manufacturing hub.

A DELEGATION of the Dalit Shoshan Mukti Manch comprising of Subhashini Ali (vice-president) and Nathu Prasad (joint secretary) met the president of India on June 27 and handed over a memorandum giving details of the reign of terror unleashed against dalits in many parts of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana and Rajasthan in the aftermath of April 2.  The governments are acting in a vindictive manner. While more than 10 dalits were killed during the bandh, no one responsible for their deaths including members of the Sangh Parivar who were photographed openly using firearms on the 2nd hav

THE All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA), in a statement   issued on June 4, has condemned in the strongest terms, the gang rape of the five NGO women workers in the Kochang village in Khunti district of Jharkhand.  The brazen manner in which the women were abducted at gun-point and raped and then silenced into not reporting the crime reflects the total lawlessness and the atmosphere of terror prevalent in the BJP-ruled state.

THE social life of Assam is in for a boil over Citizenship (Amendment) Bill 2016, a proposition to grant citizenship based on religion, in Assam. Public anxiety became visible when the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) visited the state.Assam has always been a sensitive place when it came to questions of ethnicity and nationality. However, the intensity with which people reacted to the bill was never seen in the recent history of Assam.People and organisations representing all communities in Assam have anxiously participated in the public hearing at Guwahati and Silchar.

YET another CPI(M) leader, Tapas Sutradhar of Panisagar Sub-Division under North Tripura district, was killed on June 18 by the BJP assassins. Sutradhar was the Party’s Panisagar sub-divisional committee member, state committee member of the All India Kisan Sabha, and former pradhan of Uttar Padmabill gram panchayat. His body was identified by the villagers the next morning. He was killed at Padmabill near his house, while he was returning from a marriage ceremony at night. His throat was found slit. It is a pre-planned political murder carried out by BJP assassins.