National Health Policy 2017: Assurance for Whom?

THE government has finally approved the National Health Policy-2017, bringing to an end a two year long process. A draft of the policy was available since mid-2015 but it is believed that the government, at the Niti Ayog’s behest had been unhappy with some specific parts of the earlier draft that was critical of the private sector.Experience with past National Health Policy documents (we have had two in the past – one in 1983 and one in 2002) have not been particularly positive.

The ‘RSS Factor’ in Dalit Politics

AFTER the massive win in Uttar Pradesh, the prime minister has announced that the stage is set for a ‘New India’ which is based on development and not on the politics of caste or religion. This claim is based on the understanding that the people of UP defied the caste and religious equations this time to defeat the forces of ‘castiest’ and ‘communal politics of BSP and SP-INC combine’ in order to support social harmony and development in the state.

On Adityanath as Chief Minister of UP

The Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has issued the following statement on March 19THE appointment of Yogi Adityanath as the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh is a shocking decision by the BJP. This choice by the RSS, executed by its political arm, the BJP, is a deliberate move which bodes ill for the state.Adityanath is a known Hindutva fanatic who has a record of inciting communal violence, having a number of criminal cases pending against him.

SC Must Adjudicate on Matter Before it

The Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has issued the following statement on March 22, 2017THE suggestion made by the Chief Justice of India J S Khehar, asking the parties concerned in the Ayodhya dispute, to settle the matter through talks, is superfluous and unwise.The Supreme Court is to hear the appeals against the Allahabad High Court judgement on the Ayodhya matter. Instead of doing so, the chief justice has asked the parties to go for an out of court settlement.There is a long history of negotiations and talks in the matter.

On the Ideology of RSS – I

THE ABVP’s onslaught of terror and violence in Ramjas College, Delhi University should serve as an important reminder of the fundamentally anti-democratic nature of its parent organisation, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and all its affiliates. We must not look at the hooliganism of ABVP as an aberrant act but instead as something that is integral to RSS ideology.

Otto Rene Castillo: “The Poet is a Moral Conduct”

One daythe apoliticalintellectualsof my countrywill be interrogatedby the simplestof our people. They will be askedwhat they didwhen their nation died outslowly,like a sweet firesmall and alone. SOME of us may be familiar with these verses from a poem titled “Apolitical Intellectuals” by Otto Rene Castillo. Fifty years ago, in March 1967, when he had barely crossed thirty years of age, this Guatemalan poet, a revolutionary and a guerilla fighter, was ambushed and captured along with another member of the guerrilla group, Nora Paiz and 13 local campesinos.

This is Yogi Adityanath

ON February 10, 1999, Yogi Adityanath and his armed supporters desecrated a graveyard in Muslim-dominated Panchrukhiya village in Maharajganj district of Uttar Pradesh. When the police acted swiftly, they fled and on the way, they fired at a group of Samajwadi Party workers who were demonstrating against the then BJP government in the state. In the attack, at least four persons were injured. One of them, Head Constable Satyaprakash Yadav, who was the personal security guard of the Samajwadi Party leader leading the demonstration, Talat Aziz, later succumbed to bullet injuries.

TELANGANA Mahajana Padayatra: Unite to Fight for Equity and Social Justice

THE 154-day Mahajana Padayatra, undertaken by the CPI(M) in Telangana, culminated with a massive struggle convention for social justice in Hyderabad on March 19. It covered a distance of about 4,200 kilometres and visited more than 1,500 villages in all districts of the state.

KARNATAKA: Twenty Thousand Anganwadi Workers occupy road to Vidhan Soudha

KARNATAKA anganwadi workers are on an indefinite strike for the last three days (as on March 22, as we go to press) throughout the state. They are demanding legal minimum wage (of Rs 10,000 in Karnataka now for many identified sectors), making their posts permanent, social security benefits etc. There have been many strikes and marches to Vidhan Soudha in the last several years for the same demands.

Bhagat, a Towering Beacon

On the occasion of the 86th martyrdom day of Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Raj Guru on March 23 we are reproducing an interview given by his compatriot, Shiv Verma, which was published in ‘The Daily’ on March 26, 1985. The interview was taken by Sudheendra Kulkarni in 1985, much before he joined the BJP.MARCH 23 marked the 54th year of the martyrdom of Bhagat Singh, the immortal hero of the Indian independence movement.

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