THE ink has barely dried on the acquisition of the French Rafale fighter aircraft, and India has once again entered the international arms market with the intention to procure hundreds of fighter jets, albeit with the proviso that they be manufactured in India. The Rafale deal, for outright purchase of 36 twin-engined medium-weight multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA) worth around $ 7.8 billion (Rs 50,000 crores), did not quite turn out to be ‘the mother of all defence deals’ it was once hailed as.
Resolution adopted at the Central Committee Meeting held on January 6-8, 2017 at Thiruvananthapuram, KeralaTHE Central Committee of the CPI(M) in its session at Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, expresses solidarity with all those organisations of dalits, students, women and democratic sections who are observing the first anniversary of the institutional murder of Rohith Vemula on January 17, 2017. It is a travesty of justice that a brilliant, young dalit student was pushed into committing suicide because of the brutal insensitivity and caste prejudice displayed by two cabinet ministers
Resolution adopted at the Central Committee Meeting held from January 6-8, 2017 at Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. THE Central Committee meeting of CPI(M) being held in Thiruvananthapuram demands the government of India to take immediate steps to increase the foodgrain quota for the state of Kerala.The state of Kerala through long decades of struggle came to have statutory and universal rationing.
THE Indian History Congress successfully held its 77th annual session from December 28-30, 2016 at Thiruvananthapuram, hosted by the University of Kerala.
Commemorating the centenary of the October Revolution, we shall be regularly publishing in this column, writings, essays, articles and reproduce important documents concerning the Russian Revolution, 1917. THE Bolsheviks, having obtained a majority in the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies of both capitals, can and must take state power into their own hands.They can because the active majority of revolutionary elements in the two chief cities is large enough to carry the people with it, to overcome the opponent’s resistance, to smash him, and to gain and retain pow
RECENT cases of action against adivasi rights activists, lawyers and intellectuals have shown that demonetisation has become one more tool of State repression. At the start of the demonetisation drive, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, claimed that this measure would strike at the root of the funding to ‘terrorist groups and maoist insurgents”. This claim was further buttressed by unverified police media leak that the ‘maoists’ had stashed rupees seven thousand crores in the jungles and were now forcing villagers and sympathisers to exchange their old notes for new ones.
WE do not live in a “post-truth” world, neither in the Middle East nor in the West – nor in Russia, for that matter. We live in a world of lies. And we always have lived in a world of lies.Just take a look at the wreckage of the Middle East with its history of people’s popular republics and its hateful dictators. They feast on dishonesty, although they all – bar the late Muammar al-Gaddafi – demand regular elections to make-believe their way back to power.Now, I suppose, it is we who have regular elections based on lies. So maybe Trump and the Arab autocrats will get on rather well.
THE people of Tamil Nadu have been facing a very severe agrarian crisis over the last several months. The entire state is in the grip of a drought, with the failure of both the south-west and the north-east monsoons. The refusal of the BJP government to implement the Supreme Court directive of September 30 to constitute the Cauvery Management Board has further complicated matters and the situation in the Kaveri delta districts of Thanjavur, Tiruvarur and Nagapattinam has turned grim. There has been a spate of farmers’ suicides in the state on an unprecedented scale.
FOR 28 years now, January 1 has been an important date on the Delhi calendar. What began as a spontaneous coming together of artistes of different hues, vocations and inclinations has become, arguably, the most prominent annual cultural and political event in the city. Routinely, the colorful drapes and banners adorned the otherwise dreary built structures of VP House. The events organised by Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust began at noon with the play “Desh Badal Raha Hai” by the theater group, Bigul.
THE US has imposed fresh sanctions on Russia and expelled 35 of her diplomats on Russia's supposed hacking of the US elections. Obama, as president, was seen to be less prone to war unlike his predecessor George Bush (Junior) or even his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton.