KUDUMBASHREE in Kerala has launched a new 'Lunch Bell' project which is akin to Mumbai's dabbawalas. Kudumbashree volunteers are distributing hot lunch boxes to offices via the PocketMart food delivery app. Orders will be accepted until 7 am, with lunch boxes scheduled for delivery by 12 pm. Volunteers will collect empty lunch boxes by 2 PM, ensuring a three-level hygiene wash before reuse.The budget lunch box, priced at Rs 60, includes rice, sambar, pulissery, koottukari, chutney, and pickle, while the premium lunch box, costing Rs 99, has non-vegetarian dishes.

THE fifth state conference of Chhattisgarh Kisan Sabha, affiliated to the All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS), was successfully organised on March 2-3 in Kalyanpur village of Surajpur district. The conference, held after a gap of 11 years, started with a big rally and public meeting.

DESPITE frantic efforts by Mamata Banerjee's administration to suppress the news, the horrors that took place under the leadership of Sheikh Shahjahan's forces in Sandeshkhali during the last ten years of the Trinamool regime have now spread across the mainstream media. The rule of law had collapsed in Sandeshkhali. The BDO has been assaulted. Rice fields have been forcibly occupied and inundated with salt water and converted into fish farms. The villagers were deprived of their allowances from various state government schemes. Housing scheme allotments have been taken away.

THE Puducherry CPI(M) state unit has initiated a prolonged and widely supported struggle on February 19, 2024. The coalition government of NR Congress and BJP has persistently refused to reopen ration shops across the state since their electoral victory in 2021, causing significant distress to the poor, downtrodden, and middle-class people of Puducherry. The total population of the state is 15 lakhs.Out of the 3,52,382 ration cards issued, 1,60,211 are red ration cards (allocated to below poverty line families), and 1,66,142 are yellow ration cards.

RESPONDING to the call of mass mobilisation, civil disobedience and grameen bandh given by Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM), and the Joint Platform of Central Trade Unions/Federations/Associations and various other mass organisations of the state, Bengal erupted in a wave of protests on February 13. Though the programme was slated to happen on February 17, it was held earlier in the state due to the oncoming board examinations. Across the state, workers and farmers in huge numbers took to the streets and   demonstrated against the anti-worker, anti-farmer policies of the Modi government.