A SERIES of programmes were organised across Tripura to mark the 75th anniversary of India’s Independence and 80 years of the Quit India Movement, at the call of the CPI(M) state committee. The DYFI also organised a host of programmes separately on the occasions. These programmes included rallies, processions, hall meetings, human chains and blood donation camps.

THE Working Committee of the All India Fishers and Fisheries Workers’ Federation (AIFFWF) met on August 19-20, 2022, at Vizhinjam in Trivandrum, Kerala. It was attended by 26 members from Kerala, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Bihar.The meeting was presided over by Debasish Barman, president, AIFFWF. CITU President Hemalata who is also the vice president of AIFFWF, participated in the meeting.

THE Electricity (Amendment) Bill 2022, introduced in the Lok Sabha on August 8, 2022, is yet again another attempt to privatise electricity distribution, reduce subsidies, and leave India's poorest to the caprices of the market. Such attempts to amend the Electricity Act of 2003 were made in 2014, 2020 and again in 2021. It now has reappeared in new clothes in 2022.

A CONDOLENCE meeting was organised on the evening of August 16, at CPI(M) headquarters, A K Gopalan Bhawan, to pay tributes to Comrade Birender Singh and Comrade Rajiv Jha. The two comrades, who had been associated with the Party centre for more than four decades as full-fledged workers, died recently.

ONE of the major promises of independent India was to embark upon a path of self-reliant economic development and industrial growth breaking free from the international division of labour imposed by the imperial order. India happened to be one of the countries in the East with some industrial base and until 1938 the average industrial growth rate in India was higher than the world average.