INDIA recently announced a goal to produce and sell only electric cars (presumably including two and three wheelers) by 2030, chiefly aiming to reduce the petroleum import bill and running cost of vehicles, while simultaneously reducing air pollution with attendant health benefits and cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
IT was a historic struggle. And it culminated in an equally historic victory. It has already had its impact all over Maharashtra. And it will have its impact in the country.On June 11, 2017, the farmers of Maharashtra at last won the hard-fought battle for a loan waiver after a ten day unprecedented strike struggle that began on June 1, supported by a massive Maharashtra Bandh on June 5.
Below we publish the excerpts of the speech made by Pinarayi Vijayan, chief minister of Kerala at the special session of the state assembly called to discuss the central government's recent order restricting cattle trade.
THE term “globalisation”, though much used, is extremely misleading, as is its presumed “other”, “nationalism”. This is because both terms are used as blanket terms without any reference to their class content, as if there can be only one kind of “globalisation” and only one kind of “nationalism”.
THE Bhoomi Adhikar Andolan of all the Left and democratic peasant and agriculture workers organisations and social organisations observed June 14 as protest day across the country against the Mandsaur police firing on farmers by the BJP led Shivraj Singh Chouhan government of Madhya Pradesh. The farmers were on struggle with the genuine demands of remunerative price to all the crops and comprehensive loan waiver.
ALL India Agricultural Workers Union joins the All India Kisan Sabha, All India Democratic Women’s Association, Dalit Shoshan Mukti Manch, CPI(M) and CPI in protesting against the government of India’s restrictions on selling of cattle from livestock markets all over the country to abattoirs.In a statement issued on June 9, AIAWU said that this restriction on sales will increase the number of cattle roaming all over the country, destroying a large part of the crops in fields as farmers are unable to feed those that can no longer provide milk.
INDIA’S banking system, which was robust enough to withstand the financial crisis of 2008, is facing yet another crisis today. The banks, particularly the public sector ones, are burdened with huge amounts of non-performing assets (NPAs), which are threatening the viability of the banking sector.In the last three years, under BJP rule at the centre, the NPAs of the banks have tripled - from Rs 2.3 lakh crores to Rs 6.8 lakh crores.
Q: Prabhat Patnaik in his column in the Peoples’ Democracy (Vol. XLI No. 19) wrote: “As Trumpism, and the ultra-Right in general, comes a cropper, since it does not face the basic issue of the hegemony of finance, and as the Left acquires greater clarity on the need for delinking from globalisation in the event of the hegemony of finance continuing to persist, the bankruptcy of the “liberal bourgeois” position will drive more and more working people into supporting the Left.
Statement of the Students’ Federation of India THE recently declared intermediate results of Bihar State Education Board (BSEB) has yet again brought to fore the deep crisis and anarchy afflicting the education system in the state.