CPI(M) Kerala state secretary, Kodiyeri Balakrishnan, in a statement issued on July 11, has stated that the rumours about CPI(M) observing a “Ramayanam Masam” during Karkidakam, a month in Malayalam calendar, are baseless.RSS has been exploiting the Ramayanam celebrations during the month of Karkidakam for advancing their communal agenda.
KERALA has received international recognition for its effective prevention measures against Nipah virus outbreak. The Institute of Human Virology in Baltimore honoured Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and Health Minister K K Shylaja for the government’s efforts in curbing the outbreak.Noted bio-medical scientist and co-founder of the institute Dr Robert C Gallo presented awards to the chief minister and the health minister.Dr Robert Gallo, who was part of the scientific team that discovered the HIV, along with other scientists in the institute held talks with the Kerala delegation.
CERTAIN leaders of the central government are making efforts to turn science into forum for nationalistic and religious grandstanding, much like what they have earlier done in Art, History, and social sciences. If present trend of attack on science and technology (S&T) is allowed to continue, future of India is in great peril, warned S Ramachandra Pillai (SRP), vice president of All India Kisan Sabha(AIKS) and CPI(M) Politburo member.
MUCH has been written by now exposing the fraudulence of the government’s claims of a “historic” rise in the minimum support price for kharif crops. It has been pointed out for instance that while the Swaminathan Committee had recommended that the MSP should be fixed at 50 percent above the cost of production C2 which includes rental on own land, a recommendation that the BJP in its 2014 election manifesto had promised to implement, the current MSP still falls way below that level.
‘KISAN Sabha in every village, all kisans in Kisan Sabha’ was the clarion call given at the 34th conference of the All India Kisan Sabha. Farmer-activists are engaged accordingly and are meeting the peasants in villages, taking the Kisan Sabha’s message to villages and for the expansion of the organisation. To intensify the process, in the office-bearers’ meeting on July 25, it was decided that our primary units should plan to visit maximum farmer households in their area to build contact with the rural masses.
MORE than a year since the government failed to implement minimum wages in Delhi, members of eleven trade unions including major ones like CITU, AITUC and INTUC have decided to go on strike on July 20 pressing for their demands. A formal notice was given to the chief minister and the lieutenant governor of Delhi on June 27.While the minimum wage of workers in Delhi is declared to be Rs 13,896 by the government on March 3, 2017, it has not been implemented yet. Most of the workers are denied minimum wage even as they are forced to work for more than 12 hours a day.
A PUBLIC meeting of Indo Canadian Workers Association (ICWA) of Canada was organised in Surrey, Canada on June 30, 2018. Tikender Singh Panwar former deputy mayor of Shimla and member of the CPI(M)’s PD/Lok Lahar unit was the chief guest and the key note speaker. This public meeting was attended by near 100 people from different walks of life.
CPI(M) Andhra Pradesh state committee has organised a protest on July 12, against the illegal arrest of young men belonging to the minority community in Guntur. The CPI(M) activists including the state secretary P Madhu, who were on their way to visit the families of the arrested were lathi-charged and arrested by the Guntur police.
PRIME Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP had generated high hopes and got the support of farmers in 2014 elections by promising the implementation of the Swaminathan commission recommendation of fixing MSP according to the formula C2+50 percent. It has betrayed them yet again by announcing MSP for the Kharif crops based on A2+FL costs instead of the promised more comprehensive C2 costs. Also no steps have been taken to ensure assured procurement. Without assured procurement any such announcement is only notional and will not accrue to the cultivating peasantry.
THE All India Kisan Sabha, in a statement issued on July 10, has noted that the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (OECD-ICRIER) Report on the farm situation vindicates its position that the neoliberal economic policies have adversely affected the peasantry and accentuated the agrarian crisis in the country. The report has rightly diagnosed that farming in India has been unremunerative for two decades. According to the report the gross farm revenues fell 14 percent on average between 2000 and 2016.