AFTER a sudden declaration of the nationwide coronavirus lock-down on March 24, the labour contractors and employers swiftly fled the scene. Except for lip sympathy, the state and central governments did nothing for the migrant labourers.

ONLY communism has the power to solve people's problems, asserted the leaders of various Left parties who spoke at an online public meeting organised on ‘Telangana Formation Day- People's Demands Day’, on June 2. They said that the Kerala government led by the Left Democratic Front had set an example by effectively combating the Covid-19 pandemic while the BJP government miserably failed in doing so and has surrendered to the pressures of the corporates during the crisis period.

UTTAR Pradesh is always in the news.  Most recently, several laudatory articles appeared in the national press praising the measures taken by the strongman chief minister to deal with the corona crisis.  Some of the sheen was lost, however, when a video in which the principal of the GSVM Medical College, Kanpur, one of the foremost medical institutions of north India, rants against first the Jamaatis whom she refers to as ‘terrorists’ who do not deserve hospitalisation and treatment.  She goes on to castigate the entire minority community.  While our Party

Apart from providing succour to distressed, running community kitchens, providing relief to Amphan victims, the Left parties in West Bengal have organised protest movements highlighting peoples’ demands. On the one hand, the central government is sharpening its attack on peoples’ livelihood; on the other the state government has shown a paralysed reaction to both Covid-19 and recent cyclone. The Left parties have raised peoples’ issues through demonstrations and symbolic protests.

THE National Coordination Committee of Electricity Employees and Engineers (NCCOEEE) has given the call for a National Protest Day on June 1 against the Electricity (Amendment) Bill, 2020. The organisation demanded its withdrawal.