PROTESTING against the governor’s steadfast propagation of obscurantist ideas on various platforms across the state and consistent disregard for constitutional ethos, the CPI(M) Tamil Nadu state committee organised a gherao of Raj Bhavan at Chennai on January 20.The meeting organised at the gherao site was presided over by K Balakrishnan, state secretary of CPI(M). Polit Bureau member G Ramakrishnan, Central Committee members P Sampath, U Vasuki and P Shanmugam, Madurai MP Su.

IN January 2023, three important leaders from the United Nations (UN) visited Afghanistan. Amina Mohammed, deputy secretary-general, Sima Bahous, director of UN Women, and Khaled Khairi, assistant secretary-general for the UN’s peacekeeping operations, spent four days in the country, meeting Taliban leaders in Kabul and Kandahar. The UN officials ‘conveyed the alarm over the recent decree banning women for national and international non-governmental organisations, a move that undermines the work of numerous organisations helping millions of vulnerable Afghans’.

A delegation comprising Brinda Karat, CPI(M) Polit Bureau member;  Dharamraj Mahapatra, acting secretary of Chhattisgarh state committee of CPI(M); Bal Singh, state secretary of Adivasi Ekta Mahasabha;  Najeeb Qureshi and Vasudev Das  visited Chhattisgarh from January 20-22 to meet the victims and affected people of the recent violence against Christian community. The delegation submitted a memorandum to the chief minister of Chhattisgarh on January 22 outlining the predicaments of the state’s minority Christian population and urged immediate measures to address the issue.

THE union budget for 2023-24 is to be presented before parliament on February 1, 2023 at a time when both the Indian as well as world economies face a grim situation. Notwithstanding the tall claims of the Modi government, India’s economy is yet to recover from the crippling effects of the Covid pandemic and the disastrous way in which it was handled by the government of India.Since the time the last budget was presented, the global economic context has also worsened with the outbreak of the military conflict in Ukraine and the sanctions imposed by western powers.

BESIDES gloomy global macroeconomic environment infested by high food and energy inflation leading to cost of living crisis together with rising costs of input and corporate credit because of higher interest rate triggered by inflation targeting monetary stance across countries, the crisis of capitalism is also manifested in a deeper manner by slowing down of aggregate productivity growth.Productivity in its different measures is a ratio of economic output to economic inputs.