A JOINT meeting of the central leadership of All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS), All India Agricultural Workers’ Union (AIAWU) and Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) was held on June 9 to discuss the current acute distress and growing economic crisis in the country during the Covid-19 pandemic.  The meeting concluded that instead of taking effective measures to contain the pandemic, the BJP government is aggressively trying to centralise entire governance through authoritarian measures and fascistic intent.

THE petrol and diesel prices have been hiked daily for eleven successive days from June 7 to 17.  By these hikes, the retail price of petrol has increased by Rs 6.02 per litre and diesel by Rs 6.40 per litre. These daily hikes by the oil companies, at the behest of the government, have come at a time when the economy is contracting and demand is at an all-time low with unprecedented levels of unemployment and loss of incomes and livelihoods.The Modi government’s policy of making petrol and diesel costlier is actually taking away money from people’s hands at a time when they desperately need

THE Centre of Indian Trade Unions, in a statement issued on June 18, has welcomed the joint decision by all the federations and unions of workers to go for three days countrywide strike from July 2-4, 2020 in all coal mines and establishments in the country demanding scrapping of the government decision to allow commercial mining of coal by private sector including foreign entities, separating CMPDIL from Coal India Ltd and the move to privatise public sector coal mining companies in the process. CITU has been voicing its vehement opposition to the destructive decision of the government of

SOMETHING very odd is happening in the United States. The coronavirus toll keeps rising with no end in sight. The economy has virtually collapsed with more than 40 million people filing for unemployment. Thousands are out on the streets protesting against the rampant racism that marks that society. Relations with China have reached a nadir. Altogether, as philosopher Cornel West put it, the US is showing every sign of being a “failed social experiment”. And yet there is a veritable boom in the US stock market.

THE American strategic community is worried about China but it is more worried about the Sino-Russia combine. The American realists are pursuing two different strategies to deal with the two Eurasian powers. They are proposing an offensive-realist paradigm to confront China and realist restraint theories to appease Russia.Take for example, John Mearsheimer. When it comes to China, he says that the US must maximise its global power and seek the establishment of full hegemony in the Indo-pacific region to protect itself “against the intrinsic anarchy” of the international system.