CPI(M) Polit Bureau has issued the following statement on February 17
THE CPI(M) expresses serious concern at the attacks on students and people belonging to Kashmir which have taken place in different parts of the country. Students were beaten up in Dehradun by Bajrang Dal and VHP men.
Threats and attacks on Kashmiri students and traders have occurred in other places too. Jammu is under curfew after attacks on Kashmiri residents there.
MARX was more than right in his prophecy that the Gotha compromise programme would open the doors wide to opportunistic self seekers. One year later, the prophecy was realized when a private lecturer in Berlin, Eugen Duhring, found an audience in the Party for his petty-bourgeois ideas about Socialism and was even lauded by leading Social-Democrats.
NEARLY a year after the first Kisan Long March from March 6 to 12, 2018, the AIKS Maharashtra state council held at Nashik on February 4, 2019, took the major decision of launching a second massive Kisan Long March in defence of the rights of the peasantry. This long march, which will begin from Nashik on February 20, the martyrdom anniversary of Comrade Govind Pansare, will culminate in Mumbai on February 27, the martyrdom anniversary of Chandrashekhar Azad. The state assembly’s budget session begins in Mumbai on February 25.
THE state of Kerala was in amidst of a debate following the Samrakshana jatha which elaborates the LDF progress. Thousands of people have thronged at the centres to have a dialogue with the leaders during the jatha programme. The issues like development, communalism and democratic rights have also been thoroughly discussed in these centres.
BIRTH centenary of Indian Marxist philosopher, Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya, was observed by the Marxist (Tamil) monthly, in association with Bharathi Puthagalayam and the department of philosophy, Pachaiyappas College, Chennai. A one-day seminar was held at Chennai, on February 16, to remember his contributions to unearth the treasure called Lokayata from the ancient Indian philosophy, including vedic literature, that created a new world of thought in India.
AS reported in the earlier article, if the plight of kisans in drought-hit Beed is serious, then that of agricultural workers who comprise around 35 per cent population and especially women workers is much worse and should be of grave concern.
IN 2011, in Davos, the World Economic Forum (WEF) hailed the birth of a new “asset class” – data. Going into raptures, they proclaimed data as the new oil. The WEF love for data has only grown with time. In 2019 it has declared that data is not merely oil, it is “super oil”: unlike the universe of oil, which is bound to the physical world and therefore finite, super oil or the data universe, is unbounded and growing exponentially. As long as machines can produce and consume ever larger amounts of data, the immaterial world of money and data can expand infinitely.
CITU general secretary Tapan Sen has written to the minister of labour and employment, rejecting the recommendations of the expert committee on minimum wage. He demanded that the minimum wage be fixed at Rs 18,000 per month and enforced across the country.
ON the slogans of, no to direct cash transfer and no privatisation in ICDS; implement minimum wages of Rs 18,000 per month and pension of Rs 6,000 per month for anganwadi workers and helpers; regularise them as government employees; make anganwadis full time as anganwadi cum creches, the ALL India Federation of Anganwadi Workers and Helpers (AIFAWH) union has decided to march to parliament on February 25, 2019.