Dear comrades,
Through you, the Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (PKP-1930, the Philippine Communist Party) sends its warmest fraternal greetings to the 21st Congress of the Communist Party of India (Marxist).

Your 21st Congress is held when India is in the grip of a grave political and economic crisis, with the main rightwing party – the Hindu fundamentalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led by Narendra Modi – having grabbed central power with the reported unlimited use of money and the suppression of voting rights of opponents in the elections.

IF one adds up the foreign exchange reserves of all the countries in the world, including under the term “reserves” what these countries hold in the form of gold, US dollars, other reserve currencies, Special Drawing Rights of the IMF, and also liquid assets such as short-term Treasury Bills of the US government, then the total sum in August 2014 came to $12.03 trillion. Nearly two-thirds of this amount is held by developing countries whose reserve accumulation started increasing after the Asian financial crisis of the late nineties.

THE government of Tripura has decided to withdraw the section 3 of AFSPA from the state. This decision was taken in the meeting of the state cabinet held on May 27. Chief minister Manik Sarkar made this announcement at a press conference at the civil secretariat. Prior to this decision, the act was in force in the 24 police station areas and in parts of six police station areas. In view of the severe extremist problem the section 3 of the act was brought into force in the state on February 16, 1997 and was operational in two-thirds of the police stations of the state.

THOUSANDS of peasants forced a shutdown of traffic in district headquarters for hours in West Bengal protesting against the policies of the TMC government and the Land Acquisition Bill of the Modi government.Peasants in West Bengal are passing through an acute crisis for years now. They have been forced to go for distress sale of their produces, both rice and potato, for consecutive years. In the absence of public procurement, the peasants have sold paddy at much less price than their production cost.

THE External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj has announced that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit Israel at a mutually agreed date. This will be the first time an Indian prime minister visits Israel. The significance of such a visit would be that the close strategic relationship existing between the two countries will be given an official stamp. As some commentators have put in, Indo-Israeli relations will be “coming out of the closet”.