WORLD Environment Day falls on June 5, each year and the theme for the coming decade has been declared as “Ecological Restoration.” It is indeed a tragedy that this article, written in commemoration of the Day draws attention to the ecological and human disaster unfolding in the Lakshadweep archipelago in the Arabian Sea, as well as in the Andaman & Nicobar island chain on the eastern flank of peninsular India in the Indian Ocean, in the name of “island development.”Many articles have appeared in the past week or so, including in this publication, on the series of unprecedented, arbitra

THE ministry of electronics and information technology (MeitY) issued a new set of rules as part of the IT Act on February 25,  2021, termed the "Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics." Social media intermediaries such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp were given three months (by May 25th) to comply with the rules or lose their 'safe harbour' provisions.

THE state committee of CPI(M) has strongly condemned an attack on Ajay Kumar, leader of the legislature party in the state assembly.  A member of the state secretariat, he was attacked on May 29, around 10 pm at the CPI(M) district office in Samastipur. The Bibhutipur MLA was also attacked on May 2; he narrowly escaped. The attack on May 29 appears a part of the same conspiracy and is highly condemnable. Security guards who were with Ajay Kumar were badly injured.

Today, as peasants gather in Delhi to mark six months of one of the most popular protests in contemporary times, what lessons does a 1907 incident have?ON May 26, 1907, Lord Minto, viceroy and governor general of India, put an end to one of the most intense popular peasant agitations in the Punjab province by the exercise of a veto on the Colonisation Bill introduced in the Punjab Legislative Council in October 1906.The veto effectively put the break on rural discontent which had spread across several districts of Punjab.

FOLLOWING its $1.9 trillion Covid-relief package, the Biden administration has further announced an infrastructure package of $2.3 trillion. But in contrast to the former which is to be spent within months, the latter is to be spent over an eight-year period. And this package in turn is to be followed by a “human infrastructure” package. All this adds up to a massive stimulus for the economy as well as a massive redistributive programme, especially since the infrastructure package is proposed to be substantially financed through an increase in corporate tax rates.