EVOKING strong regional, chauvinist and communal feelings and harping on Gujarati Modi for PM, the BJP swept all the 26 Lok Sabha seats from Gujarat in 2014. The main opposition, the Congress party, came a cropper. The BJP had polled 60.11 per cent of the polled votes as against 33.45 of the Congress. Three years later, in the contest for the assembly, things had changed. The BJP which had pompously set a target of 150 failed to reach the 100 mark, let alone retain the 115 seats it won in 2012.
WHILE the BJP manifesto had claimed that it will link MGNREGS to agriculture, nothing has happened to strengthen and expand it. No increase in MGNREGS allocation has been made even in the latest Budget. Rs 55,000 crore allotted is exactly the same as the revised estimate for 2017-18. Even by conservative estimates, more than Rs 80,000 crores will be required for the proper implementation of the programme. This callous attitude is despite the fact that over 56 per cent of wages were pending and more than 15 per cent of wage seekers did not find any work in 2016-17.
SITARAM Yechury, general secretary of Communist Party of India (Marxist) has written a reply to the letter from the chief election commissioner, Election Commission of India on March 30, on the issue of Prime Minister’s address to the nation. A letter dated March 29, 2019 signed by the principal secretary, Election Commission of India, was received by Yechury regarding the complaint he had made of the prime minister’s address to the nation as being violative of the model code of conduct.The ECI has accepted the findings of a Commission constituted by it to examine this issue.
PROGRESSIVE Democratic Front candidates have been elected to the AP state legislative council in the biennial elections held on March 22. KS Lakshmana Rao from Krishna Guntur district graduates’ constituency and I Venkateswara Rao from Godavari districts graduates’ constituency scored impressive victory. They defeated corporate education barons and their representatives. It’s a welcome feature that wide spread discussion has taken place among the teachers, employees and youth against corporatisation of education and health.
CAPITAL is Marx’s most important work. It is also a work that brings out with the greatest clarity and concreteness the method and standpoint of historical materialism, applying the method systematically to understand the laws of motion of capitalism as a mode of production. There is a great deal that one can learn from reading Capital. First, it teaches us that, to understand a society and its dynamics, one needs to look at it in historical perspective.
WHILE the media in Bengal is desperate to frame a Modi-Mamata binary, the Left parties are breaking new grounds with intensive campaign. As the campaign gained momentum, it is amply clear that there is deep resentment, even anger, against TMC government amongst the people. The eight years of stagnation of economy, deep agricultural crisis, lack of jobs and loot by ruling class leaders at every level has sharpened anti-TMC mood.
THE persecutions reported against dalits, under the rule of Narendra Modi, are on the rise in India, establishing a similar scenario to the earlier regimes of the BJP government in the history of independent India.
ON April 1, 2019, the ministry of finance issued a statement announcing the GST collections for March 2019, the last month of the financial year 2018-19. The statement celebrated what was supposed to be the highest monthly collection since the introduction of GST – Rs 1,06,577 crores. What was, however, left out of the picture was what this collection put the final seal on – namely, that GST revenues for 2018-19 are well below the figure projected even in the revised estimates (RE) presented in the union budget 2019-20 on February 1, 2019.
TAMIL Nadu police, last week, denied permission for the release of booklets on Rafale scam and other issues exposing the BJP government and seized copies of the booklets, causing the ire of the general public, progressive writers and journalists.As part of the election campaign for Secular Progressive Front in Tamil Nadu, Bharathi Puthakalayam, a Chennai-based publisher, brought out booklets exposing the Modi government, one of which was a 48-page booklet in Tamil titled ‘Rafale: The Scam That Shook the Nation’, which explains the secret deal enacted by Modi, in a lucid manner.Eminent journ