MUMBAI joined the rest of the country on January 5 with vigour. From midnight on January 5 till midnight on January 6, thousands of people in Mumbai from all walks of life, irrespective of age, religion and caste, occupied the historic monument of the Gateway of India to denounce the heinous attack by RSS-BJP-ABVP masked hoodlums on JNU students and faculty members. The grievous attack on JNUSU president Aishe Ghosh and other students and teachers was condemned and the demand was made to unmask and take immediate and stringent action against the Sangh Parivar hoodlums.
WHAT do you do on an evening of dissent, especially at a time when the very essence of the Indian constitution is under grave threat? You dance, you draw, you perform and yes, you sing. For as the vibrant banners, strung at the annual SAHMAT cultural event, reminded us of Bertolt Brecht’s iconic words, “Yes, there will be singing about the dark times”.
The following is the statement issued at a press conference held on January 7, in New Delhi after CPI(M) Polit Bureau member Subhashini Ali visited various centres of Uttar Pradesh.SEVERAL districts in Uttar Pradesh have witnessed unprecedented police brutality after mid-December leading to 21 deaths.
THE movement against the CAA, NPR and NRC has been going on throughout Andhra Pradesh for the last three weeks. State convention was conducted to gather all the sections who oppose the draconian CAA, NPR and NRC on December 23 at M B Vignana kendram, Vijayawada. P Madhu, CPI(M) state secretary, MA Gafoor, CPI(M) Central Committee member, K Ramakrishna, CPI state secretary, Congress leader Tulasi Reddy and others spoke in the convention and exposed the danger of NRC related mischievous deeds of Modi government.
IT is well understood that the current ruling dispensation in New Delhi promises a lot, but delivers little. Driven by the single point agenda to grab headlines, the government rarely puts in the hard work to work out the details for implementing the policies. First with the OROP (one rank one pension) and now on the promise of creating a credible-the chief of defence staff (CDS) post, the Modi government has once again shortchanged the armed forces.
IF a head-load worker were to ask a bourgeois economist “Why does Ambani have so much wealth but I do not?”, that economist’s answer would be that Ambani has certain “special qualities” which the headload worker lacks. Bourgeois economists however are not all agreed on what exactly these “special qualities” are that are supposed to explain wealth inequalities.These “special qualities” that supposedly explain a person’s being wealthy must be independent of the fact of that person’s being wealthy, if this explanation is to have logical soundness.
THE Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) congratulates the working class, peasants, agricultural workers, students and other democratic sections for the magnificent strike across the country on January 8 despite large scale arrests and repression. The joint platform of the trade unions and different federations has successfully underlined the extremely difficult conditions of livelihood which remains ravaged by the policies of the Modi government, through their magnificent collective action.
THE visual images on television channels of masked goons attacking students and teachers in the campus and hostels of Jawaharlal Nehru University have brought home to many people the startling fact that the Modi regime is engaged in an assault on public funded educational institutions, particularly central universities.The JNU has been a prime target of the Hindutva brigade.
BY killing Iran’s top general, Qassem Soleimani, the US president Donald Trump has created a grave provocation which amounts to a declaration of war against Iran. Soleimani was the commander of the Quds force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. He was assassinated in a drone strike just when he was leaving Baghdad airport.
THE working class and the common people have, on January 8, 2020, once again emphatically voiced their opposition to the neoliberal policies and the communal divisive agenda pursued by the BJP government led by Modi.While the joint trade union platform gave the call for countrywide general strike on the day, around 200 peasants’ organisations extended support and called for a ‘rural bandh’. The call received massive response from the people already fighting the attacks on the basic tenets of our constitution and on the democratic rights of the people.