CAG Report: A Poor Defence of the Rafale Deal

THE long awaited CAG Report on the Rafale and 10 other defence acquisitions begins with two wrong notes. One is the acceptance of the government’s demand to redact the price details of the Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) or the Rafale deal; then its disclosure in the preface that the total cost of the 11 defence acquisitions is Rs 95,000 crore, effectively giving away the Rafale deal price. A simple two minute calculation (see table 1) reveals that the price of the Rafale deal or the BXX in the CAG’s table of prices was Rs 60,576.54 crore. A case of carelessness in redaction?

Resources for Welfare Expenditure

THE basic income scheme that is in the air these days, which amounts to handing over a certain sum of money to every household to ensure that it reaches a threshold cash income, is an extremely flawed scheme.

Stop Privatisation of Airports

OPPOSING the proposed privatisation of six airports in the country, Tapan Sen, general secretary of CITU wrote a letter to the union minister for civil aviation, on February 11.It is shocking to note that the government of India has decided to privatise six more airports of the country that are functioning under the Airports Authority of India through the so-called PPP route. The airports proposed to be privatised at the moment are Trivandrum, Guwahati, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Lucknow and Mangalore as per the reports received.The CITU vehemently opposes such a move of privatisation of these six

Week in Parliament

THE budget session began as usual with the president’s address to joint session of parliament on January 31, 2019. After this, Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha met and made obituary references and adjourned for the day. On the next day, minister for finance Piyush Goyal presented the interim budget 2019-20 in Lok Sabha and subsequently it was laid in Rajya Sabha, along with the Fiscal Policy Statement 2019-20. Rajya Sabha hardly conducted any transactions during this time due to protests by members on various issues.In Lok Sabha, discussion was held on the motion of thanks on president's address.

Rising People’s Protests

The Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) met on February 8-9, 2019 at New Delhi.

On Recitation of Hindu Religious Shlokas in Govt Schools

A PUBLIC Interest Litigation (PIL) against recitation of Hindu religious shlokas in Kendriya Vidyalayas, filed by Veenayak Shah, an advocate from Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, has been pending before the Supreme Court since January 2018. A bench of Justice R F Nariman and Justice Naveen Sinha decided to refer the case to a constitutional bench as the issue was of “seminal importance”. In the meantime, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, presenting arguments on behalf of the government, made a statement which assumed much importance.

NPRD Demands Revision of Amended Regulation for Admission to MBBS

THE National Platform for the Rights of the Disabled (NPRD) has registered its strong remonstration against the continuation of certain blatantly discriminatory attitudes in the matter of admissions to MBBS, as reflected in the latest “Amendment Notification” of February 4, 2019 to modifying the Regulation on Graduate Medical Education, 1997. These amended regulations debarring certain categories of disabled persons from pursuing medicine is a clear violation of the provisions of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 and the rules framed thereunder.

AIDWA Demands Removal of Minister Manoj Kanti Deb

ON February 11, AIDWA in Agartala organised a protest march demanding immediate removal of Manoj Kanti Deb, minister for sports and youth affairs from the cabinet and stringent legal action against him. It was led by Rama Das, Krishna Rakshit, Panchali Bhattacharya and others. The AIDWA leadership said, if a minister has to face such a situation, that too while sharing stage with PM, it tells all about the safety and security of women in the state. They demanded that CM Biplab Deb must immediately sack Manoj Kanti Deb from the cabinet.A video clip showed Tripura sports minister Manoj Kanti

Intensified Saffron Terror

JUST within hours of PM Modi's visit to Tripura, attacks took place on CPI(M) MP, MLAs and other leaders. In his speech in Agartala, Modi had claimed that the days of fear, intimidation are matters of past in Tripura (Darane, Dhamkane Ke Din Khatam Ho Gaye Hain).

Marx and the Russian Revolution-31

There are those, opponents of Marxism, who say: Marx had come to the conclusion that the revolution can be carried out only in the most highly developed countries whereas revolutions have actually occurred only in countries economically less developed than the most advanced Western countries. Consequently, Marx’s theory of proletarian revolution, they say, is wrong.Marx did believe that the revolution was most likely to begin in the economically more developed countries. But he did not exclude all other peoples taking the road to Socialism.

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