PRAKASH KARAT DELIVERS SUNDARAYYA MEMORIAL LECTURE
WITH the ascent to power by RSS-backed Narendra Modi, the people of the country will be subjected to twin-pronged attack – intensified pursuit of neo-liberal reforms and heightened communalisation of society resulting in division of people. The task before the Left today is to rally the people against neo-liberal policies and prepare the people for struggles while safeguarding their unity.

THE happiest person after the 16th Lok Sabha election results in India would be Joseph Goebbels, the propaganda minister in Adolf Hitler’s cabinet. Decades after his death, Goebbels must now be turning in his grave and screaming “I was right”.
Goebbels was indeed right, it seems, as it was he who had theorised the concept “tell lies a hundred times and it would be believed as true”.

ALL the unions of workers and officers of the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) have decided to launch a joint agitation to save the ICDS and the workers’ interests.

NOW that the 16th Lok Sabha election results are out and the country is in the high political mode about the formation of the next government, one may well cast a look back on the forecasts of the exit polls and compare them with the real outcome.

THE recently concluded general elections, apart from spelling out the winner, also threw many interesting, but important sub-texts. Here are a few:
No party has ever before won more than half the seats with a vote share of just 31 percent, the previous lowest vote share for a single-party majority was in 1967, when the Congress won 283 out of 520 seats with 40.8 percent of the total valid votes polled.
The Congress secured 19.3 percent votes, winning 44 seats, while in 2009, the BJP secured 18.5 percent votes but won 116 seats.