Modi Govt’s Clandestine Moves to Kill BSNL

IT is already eight months since the Modi government announced BSNL’s revival package with much fan-fare. However, except retrenching 79,000 employees under the VRS, no worth-mentioning step has been taken by the government to revive BSNL. On the contrary, clandestine moves are being made by the government to weaken BSNL and to render it a lame duck.The tender floated by BSNL to procure 4G equipments has been stalled by the government.

As US Buys Entire Stock of Remdesivir, Countries Need to Break Gilead Patent

THE US has bought up the entire stock of Remdesivir from Gilead, making it near impossible for this drug to be available anywhere else in the world. This has made all the more urgent that we break Gilead’s patent and issue compulsory license to Indian drug companies to manufacture the drug. The Indian Patent Act, 2005 in which the Left played a very important role, has clear provisions for compulsory licensing during a health emergency or an epidemic.

Coal Workers Strike

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.

No Need for a New Parliament Building

THE worldwide fight against the novel Coronavirus pandemic is far from over. The developed countries appear to be in greater turmoil. In the consequent protracted lockdown, the workers are the most affected of all.

Women and the Covid Lockdown: Some Aspects - I

INDIVIDUAL stories of suffering and of heroism often reflect a wider social reality. There have been many such in this period of lockdown.Jyoti Kumari, a 15 year old dalit girl cycled 1200 km from Gurgaon to Darbhanga with her ailing father riding pillion to take him home. In an interview she said that her mother had mortgaged whatever little jewellery she had to buy them the cycle as there was no other way they could get home.

Existential Crisis in Tourism Sector; Workers Hardest Hit

MOST of the big hotels in Shimla, the capital city, and in the state of Himachal Pradesh have started laying-off their workforce; the medium and smaller ones did it a few weeks after the first lockdown began.

Astronomical Increase in NPAs in the Current Financial Year

THE Non-Performing Assets (NPAs) is a burning issue of the banking Industry. The central government has been claiming that IBC would be an effective law to recover the NPA of the large borrowers. But the present experience seems to prove otherwise and due to that, the additional NPA in the current financial year is feared to increase astronomically. The issue of bad loan has been in existence from the time the financial institutions started lending.

CPI(M) Virudhunagar District Committee Survey: A Good Initiative

THE utter failure of the central government to provide meaningful relief to the tens of crores of our people who have lost their jobs and livelihoods following the lockdown imposed by it in the wake of the Covid19 pandemic is by now well documented. The CPI(M) and other Left parties had put forward concrete proposals for providing immediate relief to the people as well as for reviving the economy and putting the country on a path of self- reliant development.

Migrant workers stuck in a Quagmire

THE Supreme Court has finally passed the desired judgement, though too late, on the travel of migrant workers back to their homes. The SC has ordered that the centre and the state governments must ensure that within 15 days the migrant workers reach their destination. So far so good.The period since the lockdown began, there have been gory stories of migrant workers; their tales of unprecedented agony, trauma and deaths of many while travelling back to their home states and villages; this in itself speaks volumes of the government’s failure.

Assam Gas Blowout & Fire: Harbinger of Ecological Disaster in NE India

PSU Oil India Limited’s (OIL) natural gas Well No.5 in its Baghjan Oil Fields in Assam’s Tinsukhia district in Eastern Assam, less than a kilometre from the ecologically rich and fragile Dibru-Saikhova National Park and Biosphere Reserve with several other ecological hotspots in close proximity, suffered a blowout ie, an uncontrolled release of natural gas, on May 27, 2020, throwing up huge quantities of gas at high pressure into the air.

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