Editorial

Defeat the UPA’s War on Democracy !                    Build Broad-based Democratic Resistance !

In the name of combating the ‘Maoist menace’ the UPA government is gearing up for a massive combat operation. The Cabinet Committee on Security has already cleared the Home Ministry plan to take the “war on Maoists” to the next level even as Chidambaram shies away from describing the operation in terms of an outright war....Read more

Commentary

India’s China Policy:

The October 1 celebration of the sixtieth anniversary of the foundation of the People’s Republic of China has attracted worldwide attention. Considering the historical baggage of backwardness with which modern China had begun its journey and the size of China’s billion-plus population, China has indeed come a long way in these six decades....Read more

Climate Change:

Recent revelations that the environment minister Jairam Ramesh has written a “confidential” letter to the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh suggesting fundamental changes in India’s stance vis-à-vis international negotiations on climate change have come as a major shock to all those who have been following the climate change negotiations over the past few years......Read more

Human Development Index:

India’s Poor Showing

India’s high growth rates have been a matter of boastful self-congratulatory publicity for the Indian Government, with the recent recession being projected as a temporary setback, soon to be overcome. The latest Human Development Report released by the UNDP in India recently serves to confront and challenge the tall claims with the rude realities of India’s sorry human development performance in the very midst of its much-touted economic success story.....Read more

Party building

Letter from Patna

Flood- and drought- ravaged Patna Rural district has witnessed consistent mass mobilisations by people for relief, rations and jobs. The party district committee decided to intensify such protests with a campaign to ‘Corner the Dealers, Take the Rations that are our Due’ and ‘Corner the mukhiya, take our due wages.’.....Read more

Pricol Tragedy:

Witch Hunt Must Stop, Justice Must Prevail

The tragic death of a senior management representative of auto part manufacturer Pricol in Coimbatore on September 22 has triggered a frenzied reaction from the Pricol management, the Tamil Nadu police and sections of the corporate media. Roy George, Vice President (Human Resources) of Pricol had reportedly suffered head injury in the course of talks with a group of workers on 21 September and succumbed the next afternoon in a city hospital.....Read more

Pricol, Graziano:

Symptoms of Failure of TU Movement, Or of State’s Failure to Defend the Right to Form Unions?

The EPW September 26, 2009 Editorial (‘State of our Unions’) argues strongly that the growing attack on the right to form unions is dangerous for the health of India’s liberty and democracy:
“Though the Constitution explicitly provides the right to form unions, this is one right which has been under attack from the governments and courts of the country for long. National interest and the needs of public order have regularly been used to curb union rights. The Essential Services Maintenance Act is used more often than not to break industrial action (as in the case of the oil sector officers’ strike) as are the cruder instruments of police and state violence.....Read more

Feature

Footfalls of Emergency

What began as the drive in the late 1960s to crush Naxalbari did not stop until the imposition of Emergency by the Congress Government in 1974.
Today, the pretext is somewhat different. But the overall picture is eerily similar.

Tribute

Saluting the Memory of K Balagopal

The untimely death of leading civil libertarian K Balagopal on 8 October 2009 is a great loss to people’s movements for justice and democracy.

Balagopal played a key role in building up a powerful human rights movement in Andhra Pradesh and confront regime after repressive regime in Andhra Pradesh. He was among the first to confront the State on the issue of fake encounter killings – often at risk to his own life.....Read more

Article

Bihar’s Battle for Change and Development:

(Presentation by Comrade Dipankar Bhattacharya at ‘Hindustan Samagam’ (Summit organised by the Hindi daily Hindustan, on the theme of Bihar-2020: Disha aur Dasha), Patna, 20 October, 2009).....Read more

Special Report

Land Reforms Sangharsh Yatra and Convention

CPI(ML) in Bihar launched a state-wide campaign from 3-8 October to demand implementation of the recommendations of the D. Bandopadhyaya Land Reforms Commission. The Sangharsh Yatra called upon the masses to reject and oust the Nitish Govt. which is so blatantly on the side of landlords and land-grabbers....Read more

Reports

16 Exploited Indian Workers Repatriated from Malaysia

On 29 August 2009, 12 workers descended from the Dhanbad-Aleppey Express at Dhanbad station and were warmly greeted by a delegation of AICCTU and CPI(ML) activists. All around, the mood was celebratory – but the workers’ drawn faces, with unkempt beards, told a tale of the harrowing time they (along with four other workers from UP) had suffered in Malaysia....Read More

AICCTU Fact-Finding Team Investigates BALCO Mishap

The team was informed that the accident took place at 3.45 pm on 23 September, when a 27 m high chimney collapsed totally. The place was engulfed in darkness following the accident. While BALCO workers and employees began relief work, the management and contractors were nowhere on the scene....Read more

Women Workers’ Convention

A national Convention of women workers was held on October 9 at Bhilai, to facilitate ways in which to mobilize women workers to struggle for their rights. The Convention, presided over by Sunita, Meena Pal, Dolly Dasgupta, was inaugurated by AICCTU National General Secretary Swapan Mukherjee. ...Read more

Policy Watch

National Policy for Street Vendors:

The National Policy for Urban Street Vendors, introduced by the Government in 2004, and revised afterwards, first in 2006 and then in 2009, claims to give legitimacy to the vast population of crores of street vendors (rehdi-khokha-patri-pheri walas) who have hitherto been considered illegal encroachers by the law and forced to live at the mercy of corrupt municipal officials and police who would extort ‘hafta’ from them.....Read more

Party Conference at Mansa

CPI(ML) organized a conference of agricultural laborers, poor peasants, women and youth on 1st October to mark the 102nd birth anniversary (28th September) of Shaheed-e-Azam Bhagat Singh....Read more

Updates

Aila Victims are Starving:

A report

More than 120 days after the devastation wrought by the Aila Cyclone in the Sunderbans, people continue to starve as there is no supply of food because of the State Government callousness towards relief. This representative has the experience of visiting these areas several times in a mission to distribute relief and organise medical camps with People's Health and other organisations in the remote areas of Kumirmari and Satjelia islands....Read more

Adieu to Comrade Ibn-ul Hasan Basru !

With a heavy heart, we bid goodbye on 29.09.09 to Comrade Ibn-ul Hasan Basru, Central Committee member of the CPI(ML) and one of the leading lights of our party in Jharkhand. Comrade Basru, recently diagnosed with an advanced stage of cancer of the gall bladder, breathed his last at 1 pm on 29 September 09 at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS)....Read more

War and Peace Prizes

- Howard Zinn
(Source: Guardian October 10, 2009)

I was dismayed when I heard Barack Obama was given the Nobel peace prize. A shock, really, to think that a president carrying on two wars would be given a peace prize. Until I recalled that Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Henry Kissinger had all received Nobel peace prizes. The Nobel committee is famous for its superficial estimates, won over by rhetoric and by empty gestures, and ignoring blatant violations of world peace....Read more