DD Kosambi uses a telling example to illustrate the crisis of Indian feudalism: at the third Battle of Panipat in 1761, the troops on oneside had not had enough to eat, while the troops on the other side just managed to assuage hunger by looting villages in the neighbourhood; neither side in short had arranged provisions for its troops.

IN an unprecedented display of workers unity and spread of movement, as the biggest industry wise action during Covid-19 lockdown, about 1.5 lakh coal workers, irrespective of their trade unions affiliation, were in the field actively participating in the all India protest day on June 10 in all 535 collieries in eight coal-bearing states and offices of all the subsidiaries of public sector Coal India Limited (CIL) and centre-state joint sector Singareni Collieries Company Limited (SCCL) in Telangana.

THE deaths of a father and son, Jayarajan and Bennix, after brutal torture in a police station at Sathankulam in Thoothukudi district of Tamil Nadu have caused widespread outrage. Equally shocking has been the attempted cover-up by the police authorities and the underplaying of the crime by the AIADMK government. It required the intervention of the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court to establish prima facie charges of murder against the police officers concerned and to order an investigation by the CB-CID.

BETWEEN, say December 25, 2019, and June 23, 2020, world crude (brent) oil prices have fallen by nearly 37 per cent. They had fallen by over 60 per cent between end-December and mid-April, but there has been some price-recovery since then; even so, the decline in world prices till June 23 has been quite dramatic. In India however, over this very period, petrol and diesel prices have been going up sharply and are now higher than ever before; in fact diesel prices have increased even more sharply than petrol prices and the difference between the two has largely disappeared.

THE All India Democratic Women's Association, in a statement issued on June 23, has expressed shock at the Madras High Court's judgement on the appeal regarding the honour killing of Udumalai Sankar, Tamil Nadu acquitting the main accused.  It is to be recalled that Kausalya, who belongs to the socially dominant BC (Thevar) community, had married Shankar, a dalit youth of Udumalpet in Tiruppur district, in 2015. On March 13, 2016, the couple was brutally attacked by a three-member gang near Udumalpet town bus stand.