THE Central Trade Unions (CTUs) – INTUC, AITUC, HMS, CITU, AIUTUC, TUCC, SEWA, AICCTU, LPF, UTUC, in a statement issued on August 23, have congratulated the defense employees for the successful strike from August 20 in all the industrial, non-industrial (clerical, office staff) defense production units. Junior officers, charge hands have walked out of 41 ordnance factories (OF). The strike was against the Modi government’s plans to corporatise and then to privatise the ordnance factories.
THOUSANDS of Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA workers) staged a sit-in dharna at Vijayawada on August 26 demanding release of their wages that are pending for the last eight months. They also opposed the grading system introduced recently by the government intending to harass them and is a threat to their job security. Police detained many ASHA workers in their respective districts from 25th itself. Family members of ASHAs also were taken into custody at some places.
THE All India Kisan Council meeting held at Hyderabad had passed a resolution on August 24 against the decision of the BJP government led by Narendra Modi to change the existing labour laws and infringe upon the hard won labour rights. The AIKC opined that this attack on the working class has to be countered with all its might.
THE All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA), in a statement issued on August 29, has strongly condemned the decision of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of reinstating and promoting Laxman Savadi in the government.
THE bad news about the economy continues to pour in. The deteriorating employment situation is becoming alarming. Around 3.5 lakh jobs have been lost in the automobile sector, with the prospect of more loss of jobs. In the consumer goods segment, the biggest biscuit manufacturer, Parle, has announced that 10,000 jobs may have to be axed. The corporates are utilising the recession to cut jobs and protect their profits.
THIRD state conference of TNUEF was held on August 15-17 at Thanjavur, in the Cauvery Delta, soil of heroic struggle of poor agricultural labourers against both economic and social oppression, led by P Seenivasa Rao and P S Dhanuskodi.The TNUEF conference ended with mammoth rally on August 17, which was attended by nearly 20,000 people. Sitaram Yechury, general secretary, CPI M) delivered a special address in the public meeting conducted at Thilagar Thidal. He urged all democratic sections to join the struggle against caste oppression.
THE hallmark of a systemic, as distinct from a cyclical or sporadic, crisis of capitalism is that every effort to resolve the crisis within the broad confines of the system, defined in terms of its prevailing class configuration, only worsens the crisis. It is in this sense that neoliberal capitalism has now entered a systemic crisis.
THERE is no doubt that the Medical Council Act of 1956 was in need of urgent replacement. There were many reasons why such replacement was necessary. One trigger for recent attempts to change the Act was the high level of corruption. Even after Supreme Court strictures against leading individuals in the Medical Council, the influence of these individuals continued to grow.
THE state conference of the TNUEF (Tamil Nadu Untouchability Eradication Front) was held at Thanjavur from August 15-17. The need to strengthen this organisation and the many struggles and agitations that it organises was borne out by the fact that in just the month preceding the conference, there had been two incidents of brutal ‘honour killings’ in which both husbands and wives had been murdered because of their inter-caste marriages; one elderly dalit had been murdered in the neighbouring district of Rameswaram; and, on the very eve of the conference, an attack on dalits had taken pla
On the occasion of the anniversary of Fidel’s birth (August 13), excerpts from a speech by First Secretary of Communist Party of Cuba Raúl Castro Ruz, December 3, 2016FIDEL’s authority and his close relationship with the people were key to the country’s heroic resistance during the dramatic years of the Special Period…At that time few in the world would have bet on our ability to resist and overcome in the face of adversity and the intensification of the enemy blockade.