A zonal rally and convention of the Students’ Federation of India (SFI) was organised in Pune on January 24. Thousands of students from different parts of Maharashtra and neighbouring Madhya Pradesh attended the rally. The main slogans of the rally were ‘Oppose Centralisation and Communalisation of Education’ and ‘Scrap RUSA (Rashtriya Ucchatar Shiksha Abhiyan)’.CPI(M) State Secretariat member Ajit Abhyankar inaugurated the convention at Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Sanskrutik Bhavan.
THE All India Fishers and Fisheries Workers’ Federation (AIFFWF) strongly condemned the retrograde recommendations of the Meena Kumari Committee report and demanded the government of India to reject them totally.The meeting of the extended working committee of AIFFWF, which was held in the coastal town of Udupi in Karnataka on February 13-14, 2015 discussed in detail the Meena Kumari Committee recommendations on Deep Sea Fishing Policy and Guidelines and the impact of the Coastal Regulation Zone notification (CRZ) 2011 on the fishers.
THE year-long birth anniversary celebrations of Comrade Dasaratha Deb, a legendary Communist and icon of the movement for democratic transformation of Tripura, began on February 2. In the commencement of the celebrations, all the party offices in the state were embellished with red flags and portraits of Deb were garlanded.
AS part of the preparations for the 21st Congress of the CPI(M), Praja Natya Mandali (PNM), Andhra Pradesh committee has brought out an audio CD containing ten songs. The CD was widely sold during the state conference of the Party. These songs exhort people to join struggles and strengthen the CPI(M). Most of these songs were written keeping in mind the youth and were composed with peppy tunes. The CD was brought out to help the Party in the intensive and extensive campaign it had planned throughout the state before the Congress.
CPI(M) Polit Bureau member Brinda Karat has written to Tamil Nadu DGP Ashok Kumar, expressing her outrage over the role of police in trying to cover up the gang rape of a hearing and speech impaired girl in Krishnagiri district.
NEXT Monday (February 23, 2015), the budget session of the parliament begins. Naturally, all attention will be focused on this Modi government’s first full budget presentation.
‘THE heart of the city comes to a standstill!’, ‘Stranded Vehicles’, ‘Total traffic jam between 12 and 3 pm’, ‘Women Squatting right in the middle of Road in front of Freedom Park’, ‘A Deluge of People’ – these were some of the screaming headlines in the print media in Bangalore on February 13, 2015.
THE 24th conference of the Andhra Pradesh unit of the CPI(M), the first after bifurcation of the united Andhra Pradesh state, was held on February 8-9, 2015 at Vijayawada. Vijayawada has a long and glorious history of communist movement and this is the seventh time that the state conference of the Party is being held here. Holding aloft this great tradition, Vijayawada wore a festive look with red flags, banners and slogans everywhere.The state conference concluded after almost a month-long preparation, during which period, all the district conferences were conducted with much enthusiasm.
THE fifth state conference of CPI(M) Jharkhand was organised successfully in Bokaro Steel City. The city houses one of the largest public sector steel plants in the country. There has been a sharp decline in the number of regular workers, who have been replaced by part time contractual workers in the plant over the years. The latter are subject to severe exploitation as a result of the neo-liberal economic policies.
ALL India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) notes with great concern the horrific rise in the incidents of farmers' suicides in the country. Farmer suicide is a post-liberalisation phenomenon. It started and has intensified since 1995. Neo-liberal economic policies pursued by successive governments led to devastating changes in the country’s agricultural policy. As a result, public investment in agriculture gradually declined. Newly-adopted fertiliser policy caused the closure of public sector manufacturers and dependence on import which resulted in continuous increase in its prices.