TO nobody’s surprise, India and the US led by BJP’s PM Narendra Modi and the Democrat President Barack Obama renewed the 10-year Defence Framework Agreement first entered into by governments led by the Republican President George W Bush and UPA’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2005, and which was due to expire in August this year. The US might have expected that the Defence Framework would open the doors for India to become a full-fledged military ally with all that entails.
DURING the Obama's visit, it was announced that the US and India have at last found a way around India's Civil Liability for Nuclear Damages Act, 2010. Instead of the US nuclear suppliers having the responsibility – or liability – for their supplies, all the liability would now be carried by the Indian side.
THE victory of the radical Left alliance, Syriza, in the recent elections in Greece should not be seen only as a Greek phenomenon, nor even as one whose significance is confined only to the Eurozone.
IN India, there are no systematic official records of the total extent of land acquisition or displacement. Non-official studies quoted by the now wound up Planning Commission suggest that the total number of persons displaced/affected by projects for the period 1947 to 2004 is around 60 million, involving 25 million hectares of land, including 7 million hectares of forest and 6 million hectares other common property. The adivasis constitute 40 per cent of the total displaced/affected persons by projects, while dalits are 20 per cent.
A DELEGATION of School Teachers’ Federation of India (STFI) paid a week-long visit to different parts of West Bengal to meet teachers who have become the victim of undemocratic political activities by members and supporters of the state’s ruling Trinamool Congress. The delegation comprising STFI general secretary K Rajendran, federation president Abhijit Mukharjee, secretariat member Swapan Bal and CEC member Indumadhab Mohanty visited several areas of Birbhum, Bankura, Hooghly, and East and West Midnapore districts from December 29 to January 5.
CITU has welcomed the coal workers federations’ decision to hold day-long dharnas on January 30 against the government’s move to disinvest 10 percent share of Coal India Ltd.
The following is the press statement issued by the All India Kisan Sabha on January 23, 2015THE central kisan committee of the All India Kisan Sabha was held at Hyderabad on January 22. The meeting noted that the last six months has seen the unfolding of the enormous betrayal of the people’s mandate by the BJP government. One by one the government has been implementing policies that have increased the burden on the masses. The hard-won rights of the peasantry and rural poor as well as the toiling masses are being systematically curtailed.
The Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has issued the following statement on January 23.THE Shanta Kumar Committee report, which was self-confessedly prepared under the guidance of the PMO, is a blueprint to destroy India’s public distribution, procurement and storage systems and to hand it over to market forces. The CPI(M) strongly opposes these recommendations which will eliminate whatever little has been achieved in addressing the continuing problem of undernourishment and malnutrition among India’s population.
WE deeply condone the death of Shri R. K. Laxman who not only entertained Indian people through his penetrative cartoons over the decades but was, in essence, the chronicler of the Indian political developments through most of our post-Independence decades.We have had the pleasure to use many of his cartoons, as the one above, in the CPI(M) publications over many years, particularly in the campaign against communalism during the decade of 1990s.We convey our deepest condolences to members of his family and to the media fraternity.
EXPLOITING fully the servile attitude of this Modi government, being offered on a platter, US President Barack Obama, on his recent State visit to India as the guest of our 66th Republic Day Parade, got what he wanted from India to rejuvenate the beleaguered US economy. USA is simply unable to recover fully from the world capitalist crisis – a crisis that it had generated, in the first place, leading to the Wall Street collapse heralding the global financial meltdown in 2008.