IN a brazen authoritarian move, the Modi government has promulgated an ordinance to nullify the Supreme Court’s landmark decision on the Delhi government’s control over administrative officers under its jurisdiction. The ordinance gives the control over postings and transfer of officers back to the Lt. Governor and hence the centre. This is done by constituting a National Capital Civil Service Authority which will recommend the transfer and posting of...
MOST people, including even trained economists, fail to appreciate the fact that an exchange rate depreciation, if it is to work in reducing the trade deficit in a capitalist economy, must necessarily hurt the working class by lowering the real wage rate. A capitalist economy, looking at it differently, improves its trade balance, for which it must improve its competitiveness, by lowering the real wage rate; and an exchange rate depreciation is...
SERENDIPITY and experimentation with what was available often showed us humans that plant products could help treat or prevent certain diseases. But the first modern drug was by Friedrich Sertürner in 1804, who extracted the main active chemical from opium in the laboratory and called it morphine. Till the beginning of the 20th century, only small molecule drugs (SMDs), typically defined as organic compounds with a molecular...
THE fact that the new parliament building is being inaugurated by Narendra Modi and not by the president – Draupadi Murmu has created a sense of outrage in the public mind. In a throwback to the run up of the presidential election, most of the corporate media (a euphemism for Godi Media) had gone nuts over the master stroke on display! The fielding of a tribal and on top of that, a woman was shown to be an exceptional move to outsmart...
Public opinion is growing increasingly against the Trinamool regime's actions, which are detrimental to the education sector and which deprive the poor people of their entitlements by embezzling funds from rural development projects. The successive revelation of various scams serves to highlight the extensive corruption that permeates all levels of the government. Despite the reluctance of the state police administration to take...
The Public Health Centres will function in association with LSGs to ensure antenatal care, child and maternal care, and fulfilling other medical needs.THE Left Democratic Front (LDF) government in Kerala, as part of the 100 days programme to celebrate the completion of its two years in office, inaugurated 5,409 health and wellness centres across the state...
IN July 2020, a group of us joined together to create the No Cold War platform (nocoldwar.org). We drafted a statement with a strong title: A New Cold War against China is against the interests of humanity. The statement reads: “We note the increasingly aggressive statements and actions being taken by the US government in regard to China. These constitute a threat to world peace and are an obstacle to humanity successfully dealing with extremely serious...
THE Left parties of Jharkhand have announced a state-wide joint agitation to address the pressing issues in Jharkhand and intensify the struggle against the communal-corporate nexus at the centre. The Left parties held a convention in the old assembly hall of Ranchi and announced joint future programmes which include district-level conventions in June, demonstrations on public issues in all blocks during July and August, three...
THIS year’s P Sundarayya Memorial Lecture organised by Sundarayya Vignana Kendram was delivered by PDT Achary, former secretary general of Lok Sabha, on May 19, 2023 in Hyderabad. Addressing the meeting, Achary noted, “We must realise that a theocracy will lead to the ultimate disintegration of the society. There are two reasons for that. One, the presence of six minority religions the biggest of which has 200 million followers here, makes it almost...
THERE is much debate in the media about the recently released feature film 'The Kerala Story', which falsely claims that 32,000 women from Kerala were forcefully converted from Hinduism to Islam and are buried in Syria and Yemen. The 138-minute film weaponises shreds of reality to create a false narrative on why a handful of Indians joined the embraced Islam. Kasargod and Malappuram in Kerala have been unjustly portrayed as dangerous...
