THE Maharashtra state workshop of the All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) was held at Comrade BTR Bhavan, Belapur, New Mumbai on November 3-4, 2017. It was attended by 122 leading activists from 21 districts. The workshop was made up of two parts.One was a series of lectures on major topics. The second was a serious district-wise group discussion on planning of both the movement and the organisation for the coming one year on the basis of a 15-point questionnaire given by the state centre.

“Hamari bhool, kamal ka phool” (our mistake, choosing the Lotus) a slogan first raised by textile traders of Surat during their protests against the imposition of GST, is reverberating across Gujarat, predictions of pollsters notwithstanding. The Modi juggernaut, which till some time ago seemed to be far from invincible, is on shaky grounds.The confidence and flashiness so part of Modi is now lost. A party fighting with its back to the wall had the Election Commission delay the announcement of polls.

A spate of crimes perpetrated against the oppressed, Dalits and women in several districts of Bihar has put a question mark on the ability of the Nitish Kumar government to tackle the ever-increasing attacks aided by the old- and neo-feudal elements who rule the hinterland and are the pillars of political support to the present dispensation.Newspaper headlines in the past week make it amply clear that the political change of guard in Bihar has emboldened the feudal elements and that they have gone berserk. In Noorsarai in Nalanda, a poor man of low caste origin was humiliated and beaten up

In the village of Karimati in Jharkhand, Koili Devi, the mother of 11-year-old Santosh Kumari, who had died of starvation, had to flee her home as she was attacked by local goondasreportedly because she had challenged the official version that her child had died of malaria not hunger, and dared to publicly say that in fact her child had died because the government had passed orders that no one without an Aadhar card would get rations. She spoke the truth, and for that she was attacked. The local auxiliary nurse confirmed that the child was not suffering from malaria.

OCTOBER 10, 2017 was observed all over Thane-Palghar district as the 72nd Martyrs’ Day and also as the 21st death anniversary of the legendary leader of the Adivasi Revolt, former CPI(M) Central Committee member and former AIKS president, Comrade Godavari Parulekar. This day is observed every year in Thane-Palghar to renew the struggle.It was on this day in 1945 that the police of the British regime, in collusion with the landlords, had fired on a gathering of over 30,000 adivasis and had killed five of them, including Comrade Jethya Gangad of Vevji village in Talasari tehsil.