THE All India Kisan Committee (AIKC) meeting was held at Rajapalayam, Virudhunagar in Tamil Nadu on July 18-20, 2018. Massive struggles have been planned by AIKS independently and jointly with CITU, AIAWU and with hundreds of kisan, social, class and mass organisations.The committee discussed the last four years of the BJP government. Attacks on the peasantry and rural poor have intensified in this period due to blind following of neo-liberal policies and increasing assault against democracy, parliament and constitution.
CAPITALISM’S discourse on “development” which has become quite influential all over the third world in the neo-liberal period proceeds as follows: (i) “development” must consist in shifting the work-force from the traditional (petty production) sector which is overcrowded with low labour productivity, and hence constitutes a repository of poverty, to the modern (capitalist) sector which has much higher labour productivity.
IT is a multifaceted challenge undertaken against the hegemony of middlemen, mill owners, anti-farmer state and central government policies and ruling party’s apathetic attitude, distress sale and farmer suicides. In a first of its sorts after its recent formation a year back, the West Bengal state unit of All India Agricultural Workers Union (AIAWU) has decided to reach to more than 11,000 villages throughout the state within a fortnight, taking the call of jail bharo programme on August 9, called by the AIKS on the plight of the farmers. Trade Unions have decided to join in
AS the prime minister was labouring to deliver his one and half hour long speech at the end of the no-confidence motion debate on Friday, June 20, Rakbar alias Akbar Khan was being lynched to death in Alwar district of Rajasthan over allegations of cow smuggling.Till now, the prime minister has not once paid even lip service of expressing concern over the spate of lives lost due to lynching by private armies that have mushroomed under the rule of the BJP governments.
AT the call of the CPI(M) and CPI, people of Andhra Pradesh took up protest actions on July 23 against the Modi government for not according Special Category Status and failure in fulfilling the promises made to the state during bifurcation. Protest rallies, rasta rokos, dharnas and other protests were conducted throughout the state. State leaders of the two parties attended in various centres and exposed the BJP leadership in betraying the people of AP.
A DELEGATION of CPI(M) led by Nilotpal Basu, Polit Bureau member and ex MP and Haryana secretary Surender Singh visited Firozpur Jhirka and village Kolgaon on July 22 to meet the family of lynching victim Akbar Khan alias Rakbar Khan by a vigilante group on the intervening night of July 20-21 in Ramgarh (Alwar) Rajasthan.The delegation noted that this lynching is particularly shocking as it comes within days of the stinging Supreme Court judgment over vigilante crimes and such groups taking upon themselves the functions of law enforcement, based on self-declared allegations.Anger and anguis
KEEPING in mind the challenges before women, AIDWA has decided to organise a huge all India women’s protest rally in Delhi on September 4. The main issues are the increasing violence and brutality against women, especially girl children, growing unemployment, food security, the grim issue of starvation and malnutrition and the escalating communal and casteist attacks.
THE no-confidence motion discussed and voted upon in the Lok Sabha on July 20 became an occasion for exposure of the four-year record of the Modi government.Though the motion was in the name of a Telugu Desam MP, whose purpose was to highlight the betrayal by the Modi government of the commitment made to Andhra Pradesh to declare it as a special category state, the opposition was able to focus on a range of issues concerning the many failures of the Modi government.
FIRST it was the finance secretary who said that if the government borrowed less then more savings would be available for the private sector to borrow. Then it was the deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India who talked of government borrowing “crowding out” private borrowing.
NEWSPAPER headlines over the last few days have highlighted three facts which point to the current abysmal state of the Indian economy. The first relates to inflation, where the June 2018 wholesale price index was 5.77 percent above that of June last year; this is the highest inflation rate witnessed since December 2013. The second is a burgeoning trade deficit: the trade deficit in June, at $ 16.6 billion, was again the highest for any month in the last five years.