THE CITU in Telangana has organised an extensive campaign from February 10 to March 5 on the issues of industrial workers, mainly focusing on demands of minimum wages, seven hours a day work and five day week. It had a good effect on the workers. A dharna was held at the Labour Commissioner's office on March 6. This is just the beginning of the united labour movement to come!Industrial workers see CITU as a beacon of hope, for working on the problems they face.

The new amendment extends working hours from nine to twelve and removes restrictions on women working late-night shifts.THE Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) has written to the Karnataka governor Vajubhai Vala and urged him not to give his assent to the amendment to the Factories act passed by the Karnataka Assembly.If passed, the new amendments would render changes to six sections of the Factories Act 1948. The new provisions would drastically change life inside and outside the factories.The maximum working hours have been revised to 12 hours/day, up to 48 hours/week.

AS expected, the extent of people’s discontent with the misrule of authoritarian Trinamool regime was borne out in the outcome of Sagardighi by-election, occasioned by the death of sitting minister Subrata Saha in December last year. The TMC had been winning from Sagardighi in Murshidabad since 2011, three times in a row, and the by poll was considered a cakewalk, for in 2021, Saha had won by a massive margin of over 50,000 votes defeating his BJP rival Mafuza Khatun. The Left Front supported Congress candidate SKM Hasanuzzaman came third.

THE bicentenary of “Thol Seelai Porattam” (in Tamil) or “Maaru Marakkal Samaram” (in Malayalam) – the struggle by women of oppressed castes in the erstwhile Travancore to cover their upper bodies – was observed in Nagercoil, the headquarters of Kanniyakumari district in Tamil Nadu, on March 6. Tamil Nadu and Kerala Chief Ministers M K Stalin and Pinarayi Vijayan attended the event, joined by thousands of people.The erstwhile Travancore kingdom comprised parts of present-day southern Kerala and southern Tamil Nadu.

THE schedule for Karnataka assembly election is yet to be announced. Obviously many more ‘inaugurations’ (e.g., Bangalore-Mysore Expressway by PM on March 12) and ‘announcements’ are to be made, before model code of conduct comes into force.  The chief minister has announced an ‘agreement’ made with Foxcann for manufacturing iPhones which will provide one lakh jobs, and this agreement was promptly denied by Foxconn.