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Editorial |
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Jharkhand Elections:
Pressing the ‘Replay’ Button
The Congress had contested the Jharkhand election with the slogan “Chuniye unhe, jinhe desh ne chuna” (elect those who have got the mandate of the nation). It abandoned its former allies JMM and RJD and forged a new partnership with the Jharkhand Vikas Morcha formed by former BJP leader and Jharkhand CM Babulal Marandi.. ...Full text
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Commentary |
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Copenhagen:
India Signs Undemocratic US-scripted Accord
Radhika Krishnan
The 15th Conference of Parties (COP-15) has finally ended in Copenhagen, and it is now time to officially write the obituary. This week-long conference, where 110 countries of the world got together to try and evolve a blueprint to handle the climate change crisis, has quite predictably and most unfortunately ended in failure. Predictable, because for a long time now there have been indications that the US would continue to hold the rest of the world to ransom by refusing to accept responsibility for its role in creating the climate crisis......Full text
Narayanpatna Firing:
Attack on an Adivasi Land Struggle
Khitish Biswal
Narayanpatna is a block in Koraput district of Orissa (bordering AP), mostly populated by tribals and some dalits. Here, lands belonging to tribals have been grabbed over time by non-tribal landlords, liquor mafia etc, in violation of the Orissa Land Reforms Act and the Orissa Scheduled Areas Transfer of Immovable Property Regulation. In spite of the fact that the area falls under the 5th Schedule, the Government has made no efforts to recover and redistribute tribal land. The impoverished tribals here mostly work as bonded labour for landlords......Full text
Shopian: CBI On A Spree Of Manufacturing Lies
Anuradha Bhasin Jamwal
(The author is Executive editor Kashmir Times and member of Independent Women's Initiative for Justice in Shopian, which recently came out with a report on the double rape and murder case. This article is reproduced from Countercurrents.org, 16 December, 2009)
It didn’t take a single stroke for the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to demolish the allegations of rape and murder in Shopian as a figment of imagination. It took several months to concoct a suitable story in pursuit of a conclusion that was already being gradually and selectively leaked out to the media in the last few months......Full text
Telengana and Beyond:
The Issue of State Reorganisation and Autonomy
The intense agitation for a separate Telengana, especially the upsurge of students, in the face of severe repression, eventually succeeded in wresting an announcement from the Central Government that steps would be taken towards formation of a separate State of Telengana. The demand for Telengana has been a long-standing one and it gained ground in recent years in the face of deepening economic backwardness and acute agrarian crisis in the region......Full text
Will India Take Lessons from the David Headley Case?
Kavita Krishnan
Partnership with the US will secure India from terrorism – this is the ‘wisdom’ peddled by the Vajpayee Government as well as by the Manmohan Singh governments. Much of the media too has parroted this notion, and much was made of the news that American spy agency FBI would be partnering Indian investigators in key cases. The NDA Government had allowed the FBI to have an office in India, and the UPA Government had virtually allowed the FBI to take over the Mumbai terror attack investigations. The National Investigative Agency (NIA) was set up – again to allow closer coordination with the FBI. The Mumbai terror attack itself was dubbed “26/11” to match the US’ ‘war on terror’ discourse of 9/11, and Indian PM timed his US visit to coincide with the anniversary of the Mumbai attacks......Full text
Hunger and Gender Gap Indices:
India’s Sorry Performance
he UN’s Global Hunger Index 2009 ranked countries on three leading indicators – prevalence of child malnutrition, rates of child mortality, and the proportion of people who are calorie deficient.
According to this Index, India ranks a sorry 65th out of 88 countries, with a hunger rate of 23.9. Countries like Uganda (38th); Mauritania (40th); Zimbabwe (58th) and many others have a better record than India on this front. Even war-torn nations have managed to combat the scourge of hunger quite well, while India -- even though it boasts of being the second fastest growing economy in the world -- languishes far behind and millions in the country go hungry. Almost 21 per cent of the Indian population was undernourished (between 2003 and 2005), 43.5 per cent Indian children under the age of five were underweight (between 2002 and 2007) and the under five-year-age infant mortality rate in 2007 was 7.2 per cent.....Full text
Dubai Crash and the Kerala Crisis
V Shankar
The crisis of the much-trumpeted ‘superpower of the Middle East’, Dubai, came out into the open at the end of November ‘09 when ‘Dubai World’, a government-owned company, sought a moratorium on repayment of debts until at least May 2010. The capitalist world, celebrating the global economic revival, encountered a rude shock. Dubai is the latest in the series of ‘glamorous bubble’ economies that are bursting owing to globalisation and liberalisation. Dubai was not founded, unlike other UAE (United Arab Emirates) countries, on an oil economy, but was acclaimed as a financial capital and ‘pride’ of the gulf region. The Dubai Crash is the worst-ever manifestation of the brewing crisis in the oil-rich Middle East. ....Full text
Definitions of BPL and food security
An obstacle race for the poor
Radhika Menon
What is the magical figure that can ensure that the poor survive in India? Rs 446.68? Rs 578.80? 2100 calories? 2400 calories? 25 kilograms of grain? Or Rs 90 a kilogram for dal? As a soup of figures get made, the Manmohan Singh’s government has created an obstacle race for the poor so that they can compete to prove their poverty.
The government has been always reluctant to agree on the who the poor are (even when it is starkly apparent) because it would contradict its claims of growth. Yet, it is an accepted fact within the Ministries and the States that official poverty figures are far below the existing levels. But neo-liberal economics and politics of the UPA government has meant redefining not only who the poor are, but also redefining welfare measures.....Full text
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Article |
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‘Maoism’, State and the Communist Movement in India
Arindam Sen
Part II
Commentators have romanticised, eulogised and demonised 'Maoism' in many superficial ways; the point however is to appropriately assess this important trend and develop a correct political approach to it.
In the first part we showed that the Central as well as State governments are using the state-Maoist confrontation as a pretext to suppress people’s struggles on basic issues and crush the resistance against the state-sponsored corporate plunder of the country’s resources; from the standpoint of this broader movement we then started an investigation into the theory and practice of ‘Maoism’ in India. Let us move ahead....Full text
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Policy Watch |
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Civil Nuclear Liability and Green Tribunal Bills:
Red Carpet for US Nuke Companies and Impunity for Killer Corporations
Gopal Krishna
It's absolutely essential, "If there was not a cap and if there was not suitable legislation insurance in place, then we wouldn't be in the nuclear industry." - Peter Mason, president and chief executive of nuclear supplier GE-Hitachi Nuclear Energy Canada explained to the Parliamentary Standing Committee of the Canadian House of Commons on Natural Resources that is dealing with Bill C-20, their Nuclear Liability and Compensation Act, November 2009....Full text
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From The States |
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Punjab Diary
Attacks on Migrant Workers in Ludhiana
Kanwaljeet
Once again, migrant workers, predominantly from UP and Bihar, have been at the receiving end of brutal attack – this time in Ludhiana in Punjab ruled by the Akali-BJP government.
Migrant workers in the industrial town of Ludhiana were protesting against the refusal of the police to lodge complaints or take action in cases of rampant crime against them. Monthly wages of the workers were regularly snatched by criminal ‘biker’ gangs in collusion with the police....Full text
Karnataka Diary
State level campaign Demanding Resignation of BJP State Govt
CPI(ML) organized a state level campaign demanding resignation of the communal, corrupt, pro-rich and anti-people BJP government in Karnataka. ....Full text
Struggle against Privatisation and Loot of Water in the Sone Canal
Kunal
Canals and irrigation too have not escaped the assault of privatisation. In Laloo Yadav’s term itself, President Abdul Kalam had begun the process by declaring the formation of a ‘Distributary Committee’ for the No. 10 Distributary on the Sone Canal. While this was said to be an ‘experiment’, it proved in fact to be the first step towards handing over the Canal to feudal forced, and gradually a feudal ‘canal mafia’ emerged.....Full text
CPI(ML)’s Bihar Bandh on 24th November against
On 24 November, in the midst of official ‘celebrations’ of the completion of four years of the Nitish Govt, the CPI(ML) held a Bihar Bandh against Government’s betrayal on all fronts -....Full text
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Updates |
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11th Anniversary of Comrade VM’s Death
Sankalp Diwas to Intensify Struggles for Land, Livelihood, Democracy
December 18th, the 11th anniversary of the death of former party General Secretary Comrade Vinod Mishra was observed by CPI(ML) all over the country as Sankalp Diwas (pledge day) to intensify struggles for land, livelihood, and democracy....Full text
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Toungue-in-Check |
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Obama Accepts the Nobel Prize for Hypnosis and Humbug
“The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis...It's a scintillating stratagem.”
- Harold Pinter in his Acceptance Speech for the Nobel Prize for Literature 2005
Citizens of America, and citizens of the world, I am honoured and humbled to receive the Nobel Prize for Hypnosis and Humbug. Make no mistake – it’s not an easy job to tell lies that sound like the truth; to wage war and dress it up like peace; to make a warmongering nation look like a noble hero bearing a solemn burden, that’s what’s tough… (it’s so easy to look like the bully in the schoolyard – look what a mess my predecessor George Bush made!).....Full text
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Cover |
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Liberhan Report:
Inaction in the name of ‘ATR’ will not do –
Punish the Perpetrators of the Babri Masjid Demolition
17 years after the demolition of the Babri Masjid, the Liberhan Commission’s findings are finally in the public domain and have been tabled in Parliament.....Full text
25 years after the Bhopal Gas Disaster:
UPA Govt. and MP Govt Out to Bury the Truth and Bail out the Killers
On the night of December 2nd and the early morning of December 3rd 1984, some 40 tonnes of Methyl Isocyanate (MIC) spewed out of the Union Carbide Corporation’s pesticide plant in Bhopal, exposing over 5,00,000 people to the toxic fumes. 25,000 people died as a result, hundreds of thousands of persons were maimed for life, and entire future generations poisoned......Full text
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