GEORGE Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis (Minnesota) police officer on May 25. He was unarmed and had been accused of passing a counterfeit $20 bill. The officer – Derek Chauvin – knelt on Floyd’s neck for almost nine minutes. Eleven times Floyd said, ‘I can’t breathe’. The entire brutal episode was captured on a cell phone camera. Three other police officers either restrained Floyd or prevented bystanders from intervening. The video went viral; it revived memories of a cycle of police killings that became very visible after the murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson in 2014.

THE Union government launched ‘police action’ on September 13, 1948, on Hyderabad State to force the Nizam to accede to the Indian Union and to suppress the spreading Telangana peasant movement. Except in a few pockets, the Nizam’s army did not resist the Union forces and surrendered themselves. The Nizam himself, surrendered within five days – on September 18, 1948.People and armed squads utilised the opportunity of the ‘police action’ and attacked many razakar and police camps, destroyed them and seized arms and other material.

AFTER a sudden declaration of the nationwide coronavirus lock-down on March 24, the labour contractors and employers swiftly fled the scene. Except for lip sympathy, the state and central governments did nothing for the migrant labourers.Thousands of migrant workers who have been trekking the national highway of Bengaluru-Anantapur have the same story to tell.

BIHAR is sitting on the volcanic eruption of coronavirus as the reverse migration is reaching its peak. The health infrastructure is in shamble in Bihar and the government is ill prepared to meet the situation.The pathetic conditions of the quarantine centers all across Bihar belies the rosy pictures presented from Patna by holding video conferences by the chief minister. Stories of fleeing of migrant worker from quarantine centers of Katihar, Samastipur, Sitamarhi, Begusarai, Darbhanga and many other places are the daily news of the newspapers.

THE Central Trade Unions (CTUs) – INTUC, AITUC, CITU, HMS, AIUTUC, TUCC, SEWA, AICCTU, LPF and UTUC – in their meeting on June 3, 2020, congratulated the workers for responding enthusiastically to the nation-wide protest call demanding immediate halt to changes in labour laws. The meeting took serious note of the continuous aggressive attack on the workers’ rights ignoring all the joint representations to the government on the matter including the nationwide protest on May 22.