THE CPI(M) is going to organise a massive public meeting – Telangana struggle convention for social justice – to mark the conclusion of Mahajana Padayatra on March 19 at Nizam college grounds in Hyderabad.  Chief Minister of Kerala and CPI(M)  Polit Bureau member, Pinarayi Vijayan will be the chief guest. CPI(M)’s Telangana state secretariat members G Nagayya, B Venkat and T Jyothi released the Party’s charter of demands to be taken up by the movement for social justice at a media conference in Hyderabad on February 23.

CLOSE on the heels of Delhi’s Ramjas College, Savitribai Phule Pune University campus became the site of ABVP hooliganism last week. Students Federation of India (SFI) activists were attacked by the ABVP goons on February 24 night inside the campus while putting up posters of a protest programme. Nasir Sheikh, PhD student and president of SFI’s Pune University unit, Sandeep Marbhal, MA student and secretary of the unit, two other PhD students, Satish Gore and Satish Padalkar and an MPhil student Satish Debade were brutally beaten.

POTATO growers in West Bengal are enraged, with strings of protests and blockades sweeping through the state. The crisis of the peasants has accentuated as the prices of potato have come down to an all-time low, both in wholesale and retail market. Distress sale has become the order of the day. And, though it is continuing for months, no intervention has been evident from the state government.Potato, along with paddy, is one of the most important agricultural produce in West Bengal. Tens of thousands of farmers are dependent on this produce.

MEDICAL and sales representatives throughout the country took part in an all-India strike on February 3, at the call of FMRAI, demanding reduction of prices of medicines and medical devices and revival of public sector pharma units.

FINANCE capital is always opposed to the use of fiscal measures for stimulating an economy. This is because any such fiscal stimulation undermines the social legitimacy of capitalism, and especially of that segment of it which constitutes the world of finance and which is peopled with “functionless investors” in Keynes’ words or of “coupon clippers” in Lenin’s words, ie, of entities that play no role in the production process. If State intervention comes to be seen as necessary for stimulating the economy, then the question may arise in the public mind: why do we need all these entities?