THE 24th State Conference of the Puducherry committee of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) was held on November 30 and December 1, 2024, at the Comrade Sitharam Yechury Memorial Hall, in Puducherry. Memorial torches in honour of Comrade Sankarayya and Comrade Sitaram Yechury were brought from Mannadipet and Bahoor, respectively, and were used to light the Martyrs' Column. The July 30 Martyrs’ Memorial Torch of Pondicherry, brought from the premises of the Mudaliyarpet textile industry, was also received and lit at the column.A rousing mass rally marked the beginning of the conference.

CPI(M) Polit Bureau has issued the following statement on December 10.THE Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) expresses its deep grief at the passing away of Comrade KM Tiwari, member of the Central Committee and former secretary of the Delhi state committee of the Party. He died this morning after bravely battling cancer for the past few months. He was seventy years old.A trade union leader, Tiwari rose through the ranks working in the Ghaziabad-Sahibabad industrial belt.

ELECTRICITY workers across India are intensifying their fight against privatisation initiatives by the Modi government, which are dismantling profitable public utilities under the guise of reforms. The Electricity Employees’ Federation of India (EEFI), in a statement issued on December 7, has pledged its unwavering support to the protests, extending nationwide solidarity to workers resisting privatisation in Chandigarh and Uttar Pradesh.On December 6, 2024, Chandigarh electricity workers staged a massive day-long dharna in front of the Chandigarh Electricity Department headquarters.

“THE Anganwadi Worker (AWW) is required to work as a paramedic, counselor, coordinator, public relations manager, event manager, clerk, pre-school teacher, and more… Having regard to the onerous responsibilities upon the AWW and AWH, there appears to be a clear case of discrimination in the matter of public employment since a person who is engaged to carry out multifarious activities, is being paid a very meager amount of emolument on the ground that she is appointed in a scheme…the scheme may be designed to take an advantage of the completely unequal bargaining power to an unemployed lady

THE rapid advance of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and other armed factions led to the fall of Bashar al- Assad’s government in Syria. With this, the US has succeeded in toppling the last of the secular regimes in West Asia. US military interventions resulted not only in the fall of secular regimes in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and now Syria in the West Asia-North African region, but also created deep sectarian fissures in the region.