IRAN had fired dozens of missiles and drones on Israel in retaliation to the attack on its embassy in Damascus, Syria. On April 1, Israel attacked Iranian embassy and killed 13 people, including two top-ranked generals of Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). This is in violation of the 1961 Vienna Convention governing diplomatic relations and 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations that explicitly ban any sort of attack on diplomatic premises.

ON April 8, 2024, the CPI(M) began its election campaign for the Hingoli Lok Sabha seat in Maharashtra with an enthusiastic convention of more than 100 of its main activists. They came from the three districts of Nanded and Hingoli in the Marathwada region, and Yavatmal in the Vidarbha region. Parts of these three districts come in this constituency. The voting date for this seat is April 26. The CPI(M) had fought this Lok Sabha seat once earlier in 2014.

THE recent decade has attracted concerns about two potential trends of relocation of production and labour. One relates to increasing wages in the developing countries triggering a new wave of use of robots in production and the other is more geopolitical in nature referring to possibilities of relocating manufacturing activities outside China.Large reserve of cheap labour in the global south led to relocation of production in the developing countries and might have postponed large scale robotisation of production in advanced economies.

ON April 7, 2024, the All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) Maharashtra unit organised a large and enthusiastic Right to Minimum Support Price (MSP) Vidarbha level convention at Wardha. It was attended by over 800 farmers from Wardha, Yavatmal, Amravati, Buldana, Nagpur, and Gadchiroli districts of the Vidarbha region. Exactly a month ago, on March 7, 2024, the AIKS Maharashtra unit had organised a similar 1000-strong Marathwada level farmers convention at Majalgaon in Beed district.

THE policies and measures adopted by the Modi led BJP government are focussed on facilitating loot and plunder of the nation and intensified exploitation of the workers by the big corporates, domestic and foreign, camouflaged under slogans like ‘Make in India’ and Atmanirbhar Bharat. While the government also claims that these are meant for job creation, the reality is otherwise.