What is Controversial about PK?

INDIAN film industry, very rarely and only occasionally produces socially relevant cinema. PK is one such film. The film has once again proved that fundamentalists have no religion. What else will explain the opposition to the film, bringing together the RSS, VHP, Hindu Mahasabha, Baba Ramdev, Swami Swaroopanand Shankracharya, Maulana Firangi Mahal and the Jamat-e-Islami Hind? Surprisingly, it took nearly a week after the film was released for the protesters to express their displeasure.

Compilation of Babari Masjid Documents

SPEAKING at a function to release the book Destruction of the Babari Masjid: A National Dishonour, eminent historian Professor Romila Thapar said that the present book, which is third in the series on the issue, has shed further light on this shameful incident and the divisive politics surrounding it. The preceding two volumes of the series have also been penned by A G Noorani.

RSS Demand for an Anti-Conversion Law and the Double Standards

THE shameful “bahulao, betibachao” slogan (get the bride, save the daughter) of RSS affiliate Bajrang Dal is claimed to be the “Hindu” counter to the so-called “love jihad” campaign led by it and other Hindutva groups that led to communal polarisation and violence against the minority community in Uttar Pradesh.

Comrade P R Menon A Tribute to My Comrade of Five Decades

IN July 1960, a couple of days after the unsuccessful nationwide strike of railwaymen, I was waiting for an audience with the Divisional Superintendent who had summoned me. I never imagined that the wait on that verandah would bring me in contact with a man who would become my closest comrade, companion and soul mate for over five decades. When my turn arrived, I went in and came out holding my suspension order – the consequence of participating actively in the strike.

JAMMU AND KASHMIR Glowing Tributes Paid to Late Abdul Gani Hafiz

IN a condolence meeting organised in Srinagar on December 21, the state committee of CPI(M) remembered one of its senior leaders and social activist, Abdul Gani Hafiz. The speakers highlighted the personal qualities, contribution and the principled behaviour of late Hafiz. His journalistic abilities, intellectual potential and strong desire for exploitation free and just society were mentioned in detail with an assertion that his life will inspire the young revolutionaries and guide them to the path of politics which is based on ideology and the collective good of humanity.

BJP Govt's Another blow to rural poor Regional Rural Banks are Privatised

THE BJP government has passed a bill in the Lok Sabha to reduce the combined share-holding of the central government and the sponsor banks in the Regional Rural Banks to 51% on December 22, 2014.

CITU Extends Support & Calls for Countrywide Solidarity Action

THE workers of Tamilnadu State Transport Corporation have gone on indefinite strike from December 28, 2014 demanding revision of wage agreement which has fallen long overdue. All the unions in the state transport sector except one aligned to ruling party in the state have unitedly given the call for strike. The unions have been pursuing for wage revision since last six months but the state government arrogantly refused to even commence meaningful and serious negotiation. Such a situation compelled the unions to go in for indefinite strike.

Historic Struggle of Transport workers Tamilnadu Stopped and then Drived

"...THEY (the poor) have often worked not ten but twenty hours a day. Not that all the poor have rigidly worked twenty hours, but that the worth of the labour of twenty hours now, in food and clothing, is equivalent to the worth of ten hours then. And because twenty hours’ labour cannot, from the nature of the human frame, be exacted from those who before performed ten, the aged and the sickly are compelled either to work or starve. They eat less bread, wear worse clothes, are more ignorant, immoral, miserable, and desperate.

The RBI Governor’s Unwarranted Remarks

THE governor of the Reserve bank of India, Dr Raghuram Rajan, while inaugurating the annual conference of the Indian Economic Association at Udaipur on December 27, questioned the wisdom of the debt-waiver scheme for agriculturists, which the UPA government had announced in order to halt peasant suicides. He suggested that it had actually affected adversely the flow of credit to the agricultural sector. Dr Rajan is not the first to question the wisdom of the debt-waiver scheme for agriculturists; many others, especially neo-liberal economists, have done so in the past.

Anti-People Coal Mines Bill

THE Coal Mines (Special Provisions) Bill, 2014 is aimed at de-nationalising the entire coal sector and doing away with the historic Coal Mines (Nationalisation) Act, 1973. The Bill is not in the interest of the national economy, but in the interest of private corporate entities, both domestic and foreign, as it allows them to play with the most crucial natural resource owned by the people of India for their private gains.

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