FROM April 12 to 20, enthusiastic rallies and public meetings were held by the CPI(M) in all the four Lok Sabha seats that it is contesting in Maharashtra, viz Hingoli, Nashik, Dindori (ST) and Palghar (ST). The main speakers in these different rallies were CPI(M) Polit Bureau members Sitaram Yechury, Brinda Karat and M A Baby, Central Secretariat member Nilotpal Basu, Tripura minister Jitendra Chowdhury and state level leaders.

THE formal announcement by the Malaysian prime minister, Najib Razak, that the Malaysian Airlines Flight MH 370 has in all likelihood crashed in the Indian Ocean south of the Australian city of Perth, will not bring immediate closure to the grief and anger that the incident has left in its wake. The Malaysian government has based its conclusions on the new satellite data provided by the British company Inmarsat that has conclusively shown the last position of the plane in the southern Indian Ocean.

THE National Platform for the Rights of the Disabled (NPRD) strongly condemned the views expressed by Narendra Modi at Jamshedpur on April 10 while campaigning for the BJP there.

We are reproducing below a slightly edited article by Comrade M Basavapunnaiah that appeared in a special issue of People’s Democracy commemorating the birth centenary of V I Lenin (April 22, 1970). This is being done both as a tribute to Comrade MB’s understanding of the Leninst tactics and for the importance of these being based on concrete analysis of concrete conditions. Secondly, this article is being reprinted on the occasion of Lenin’s 144th birth anniversary that falls on April 22, 2014.

MUCH is written these days about how “the youth” is “tired” of the “rigid ideological positions” of the Left, how Marxism itself, notwithstanding its immense appeal in the past, has ceased to be attractive to today’s “youth”, indeed how “grand narratives” of all kinds, of which Marxism of course is the leading example, have become passé.