KERALA has long stood as a frontrunner in Indian higher education. National quality assessment agencies like the NAAC (National Assessment and Accreditation Council) and the NIRF (National Institutional Ranking Framework) have consistently affirmed the state's achievements, with Kerala's universities reaching significant milestones and gaining national recognition.Three of Kerala’s universities – along with NIT Kozhikode – have earned placements in the prestigious “overall” category, which evaluates institutions across the country.

ON July 9, 2025, as the urban proletariat launched a powerful strike, the villages of India also echoed with the sound of resistance. In a historic show of unity and determination, agricultural workers, rural labourers, peasants, and other toiling masses across the country rose in a massive rural strike. The rural proletariat responded forcefully, turning the day into a historic moment of collective assertion. The strike was called by a joint platform of Central Trade Unions and independent sectoral federations.

THE farmers’ struggle against forced land acquisition in the 13 villages of Channarayapatna Hobli, Devanahalli Taluk, in Bangalore Rural district, has ended in victory after 1,198 days of continuous protest since April 4, 2022.On July 15, 2025, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah met with leaders from the Channarayapatna Anti-Land Acquisition Struggle Committee and Samyukta Horata Karnataka, and agreed to drop the forced acquisition of 1,777 acres of farmland.The acquisition was being carried out under the Karnataka Industrial Areas Development (KIAD) Act of 1966.

THE General Strike on July 9 gave a glimpse of the anger of the workers and the toiling people against their worsening conditions imposed by the neoliberal policies aggressively pursued by the NDA government led by Modi. The call for the General Strike given by the joint platform of central trade unions and independent sectoral federations received magnificent response from the working class and support from the mass of the common people.

A RECENT paper in Science addresses an intriguing question: Did North America have settled agriculture before the arrival of Europeans? Or were the people in North America still in the hunter-gatherer stage, unlike Mesoamericans, who had advanced civilisations, such as the Mayans, Aztecs, and the Incas? The answer is that it did have significant agriculture, which "disappeared" only after their encounters with the invading Europeans settling in their lands.