IN four years, Reliance Jio used its oil and gas revenues to finance its entry into telecom and become the leading Indian player. It bled the others with its initial low cost, predatory pricing till they surrendered, letting Jio emerge as the undisputed market leader.  Jio has also made claims that its network is free from any Chinese equipment, and of an in-house, ‘indigenous’ 5G technology, positioning itself as a major player in the US-China 5G trade war.But even with its fat oil war chest, the Reliance empire had a huge overhang of loans.

THE CPI(M), on July 16, organised a state-wide satyagraha in front of government hospitals in Telangana to highlight and protest the state and central governments’ failure in containing the spread of Covid-19 in the state. Over 47,000 Covid-19 positive cases have been reported across the state and more than 400 people have succumbed to the infection so far.The protests were held in 196 centres across Telangana wherein nearly 4,700 people participated.

THE finance minister, in her article captioned “Bold decisions pronounced under PM Modi” in Times of India, dated July 14, 2020, has praised the former prime minister, Narsimha Rao for his immense political will for dismantling the four decade old command and control model. Nirmala Sitharaman, in this article, has glorified several policy decisions of the governments headed by A B Vajpayee and Narendra Modi. Truly these policy decisions were responsible to take the country's economy towards pro-corporate and were against the interest of the common man.

Below we publish the statement issued by the All India People’s Science Network, a network of 40 people’s science movements working in 25 states, on July 5DEVELOPMENT of vaccines and medicines that treat Covid-19 are extremely important elements in the ways to overcome the Covid-19 pandemic. Around 150 vaccine candidates are currently undergoing pre-clinical and clinical trials globally, though none are yet available.

TRUMP’s decision to withdraw from WHO is a continuation of his wielding a wrecking ball to the international framework of treaties and organisations. Whether it is arms control treaties, climate change, trade and now WHO, the US sees these agreements and institutions as fetters on its hegemonic powers to shape the world. Trump may express this pathology in its most ugly form, but the disease runs far deeper.Trump’s excuse for withdrawing from WHO is that it did not do its job well on the Covid-19 epidemic and was soft on China.