THE Delhi state committee of the CPI(M), in a statement issued on August 7, has expressed shock and outrage at the death of three workers due to suffocation while manually cleaning a sewer in Jal Vihar, Lajpat Nagar. It expressed its condolence to the families of the deceased.This is the second such instance in less than a month. Earlier four workers had died in similar circumstances in Ghitorni. Both these horrifying instances have taken place in areas that fall under the South Delhi Municipal Corporation.

THE joint national convention of central trade unions and independent industrial federations held in Talkatora Stadium in the national capital on August 8, chalked out a programme of joint campaign and struggles against the anti-worker and anti-people policies and the growing authoritarian tendencies of the Modi led BJP government at the centre.The national convention unanimously decided to organsie a massive three days’ ‘padav’ near parliament from November 9-11. It called upon the working class of the country to prepare itself for country wide indefinite general strike in the future.

The Bihar School Examination Board (BSEB) conducted the Class 12 board examination for the 2016-17 academic session in February and declared the results in the last week of May. Out of 12.40 lakh students who took the intermediate examination, just 4.37 lakh (35.25%) students managed to qualify the test.On June 5, eight left student and youth organisations -- SFI, DYFI, AISF, AISA, AIDSO, AIDYO, AIYF, RYA -- held a meeting to discuss the declining standard of education in Bihar.

THOUSANDS of peasants and farmers across the country holding the red flags of AIKS protested in over 150 districts at the call of the Bhoomi Adhikar Andolan to hold rallies/sit-in/jail bharo on August 9, on the seven main demands of farmers. Hundreds of peasants were detained in few places. In Rajasthan, this protest was held in 15 districts. In Haryana, there was protest at Rohtak commissioner’s office. In Himachal Pradesh, there was a central protest in Shimla in which thousands of peasants participated.

AS India marks its 70th anniversary of independence, it is necessary to recollect that the current political and social battles that are going on in our country emerge from a continuous ideological battle between three distinct visions of what should be the character of the political and social structure of post-independent India that arose during the course of our epic freedom struggle, particularly in the decade of the 1920s. The mainstream Congress vision had articulated that independent India should be a secular democratic Republic.