THOUSANDS of anganwadi workers, under the banners of CITU and AITUC, took out a massive rally from Tumallapalli Kalakshetram to lay siege to the chief minister’s camp office in Vijayawada, demanding immediate solution to their long-pending grievances. The anganwadi workers on December 18 organised ’Chalo Vijayawada' programme to seek implementation of the wage hike assurance. The Chandrababu government reneged on its promise of implementing the wage hike from September 1 and dilly-dallying on the issue by saying that a cabinet sub-committee will look into the demand of wage hike.
IT is only the ideologues of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, past and present, who have always opposed the idea of secular State because the idea of Hindutva is in antagonistic contradiction with the “basic structure of secular, republican and democratic constitution of India.” It deserves to be clearly emphasised that every controversy around the meaning and concept of Indian secularism has originated from the Sangh Parivar and the RSS swayam sevaks whether Lal Krishna Advani famous for his castigating the secularists as ‘pseudo’ or Rajnath Singh, a loyal RSS swayam sevak and the home ministe
THE 12th National Congress of COSATU (Congress of South African Trade Unions) took place on November 23-26 at Gallagher, Midrant, Gauteng Province located in the vicinity of Johannesburg. This time the theme of the congress was ‘Unity and Cohesion of COSATU to advance the National Democratic Revolution’.
THIS month the International Food Policy Research Institute has released the Global Hunger Index, 2015. The index clearly shows that even though the levels of hunger have declined since the turn of the last century, the number of hungry people in the world remains enormously large particularly in Africa, South of the Saharas and South Asia. Worldwide, the Food and Agriculture Organisation projects that there are 795 million hungry people, ie, one in every nine persons is hungry.
THE week started with uproar in both the Houses of Parliament as the opposition united against the government over the exclusion of Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy from a programme attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In the Lok Sabha, the Left parties along with Congress, the NCP and the RJD, staged walkout. The Rajya Sabha was disrupted over the killing of a Dalit in Punjab and on the encroachment drive by Railways in Shakur Basti, Delhi where 500 slum-dwellings were demolished mindlessly leading to the death of a child and leaving several slum-dwellers roofless in winter.
CONGRATULATING the working class of the country for the magnificent and unprecedented countrywide joint general strike on September 2, 2015, the general council of CITU called upon it to further strengthen its unity and take the struggle to a higher level. It asserted that the growing discontent among the working class and the common people in general against the policies being pursued by the Modi led BJP government at the centre provided an opportunity for this.
WHILE the ‘sound bytes’ of the high decibel ‘event’ of commemorating the ‘Constitution Day’ on November 26 and the discussion on the contribution of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar and the making of the Constitution in the parliament marked the formal kicking off of the winter session had hardly died down, the Supreme Court came out with a shocker. Doubtlessly, that this year marks the 125th birth anniversary of Dr Ambedkar added to the solemnity of this discussion. This is notwithstanding the controversy over the appropriateness of the choice of November 26 over the customary January 26.
Bodies such as Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), Delhi Science Forum and others have been flagging the issue of air pollution from diesel vehicles for years. They have been pointing out that small particulate matter, particularly below 2.5 micron size (PM 2.5) and Nitrous Oxides (NOx) omissions are much higher for diesel vehicles and these are dangerous to health. Increasingly, health and air quality experts around the world have been concerned with the rise of pollutant levels in towns and cities, particularly from diesel vehicles.
THE WTO has been a major weapon used by the advanced countries to roll back the structures that the third world dirigiste regimes which came into existence after decolonisation had erected for achieving a degree of self-reliance. The TRIPS agreement for instance which tightens the multinational corporations’ stranglehold over technology was pushed through the WTO.