THE BJP and the Congress parties are the two sides of the same coin and their policies of governance are the same. BJP is pursuing the same policies of neoliberalism as started by the Congress in 1991. These policies are responsible for the deterioration of conditions of not only tribals but also of the youth, farmers, working class and the general masses, said Manik Sarkar, chief minister of Tripura and Polit Bureau member of CPI(M), at the Mahapadav in Udaipur.
THE All India Kisan Sabha has condemned the BJP-led NDA government’s decision to exclude rubber farmers in Kerala and Tamilnadu from the subsidies they were entitled to for new planting and replanting. In a statement issued on June 15, it said that this move comes at a time when the rubber farmers are in an acute crisis due to fall in price of rubber. Farmers in Kerala alone are yet to be paid subsidy arrears of over Rs 30 crore for trees already planted. The Rubber Board’s own estimate recommends replanting on 2 lakh hectares in Kerala.
The following is the text of the message of greetings sent by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) to the 22nd Congress of AKEL that was held in Nicosia, Cyprus from June 4-7, 2015.
The Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has issued the following statement on June 15.
THE intervention by the minister of external affairs, in inappropriately facilitating the travel of a person with serious criminal charges connected with the IPL controversy, is completely unacceptable.
THE Modi government is faced with a major scandal concerning the Lalit Modi affair. What this episode reveals is serious impropriety on the part of a senior minister in the cabinet, the cosy nexus of crony capitalism and the typical response of a government which wants to deny and cover up the whole affair.
THOUSANDS of people marched towards the RDO office situated in Kallakurichi, in Villupuram district in the morning on June 17. They were all tribal people. They were from the Kalvarayan Hills, an important tribal centre in Tamilnadu.Recently, one fine morning the department of forests of government of Tamilnadu had given a very big shock to the tribal people of Kalvarayan Hills. The department released a notification that the 13,000 acres of land, which are in the hands of the people under cultivation for a long period, would be converted as ‘reserved forests’.
THE Report of the Bibek Debroy Committee for restructuring of Indian Railways (IR) has predictably recommended dismembering of IR and its privatisation in all but name, preferring to call it “liberalisation” instead. No doubt critiques of these recommendations will be dismissed by the BJP government and its corporate and other cheerleaders as knee-jerk reactions by the Left or from antiquated ideas of the Nehruvian-socialist era. The shoe is actually on the other foot.
HOW are Indian women living under Modi rule? This is a government of promises and advertisements, owing allegiance to corporate capital. Indian women have no place in the new face of the country created by the government. Gender discrimination is one of the pillars on which the government stands. Indian democracy has been fighting patriarchy throughout, but the one year experience of Modi government saw the bitterest form of discrimination against women with a dangerous combination of neoliberalism and patriarchy.
Four student organisations – SFI, AISF, AISA and AIDSO – have come together to launch a movement at the national level against the centralisation, commercialisation and communalisation of education. In a joint declaration, the organisations said efforts will be made to bring on board students’ organisations and groups at the state, district and campus levels who agree with the basic understanding as outlined in this declaration. Below is the text of the joint declaration:THE attacks at all levels and in different spheres of education have intensified further in the one year of Modi regime.
THE Westphalian peace treaties in 1648 which ended the thirty years’ and the eighty years’ wars in Europe are considered to have ushered in the era of nationalism and nation-States in that continent. But the concept of “nationalism” that emerged there was a non-secular majoritarian concept, which invoked both Christianity, and a sense of “otherness”, shading into oppression, towards various domestic minorities.Such nationalism did not preclude colonial conquests directed at other people.