VARIOUS women’s organisations held a militant protest demonstration outside the Vasant Kunj (North) police station on March 20, against the inordinate delay by the police in arresting Prof Atul Johri who has been accused of sexual harassment by nine women students. Professor Atul Johri is a senior professor at the School of Life Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University. The harassment of girl students in JNU is highly condemnable and shameful. Nine students from his laboratory have registered a police complaint against Prof Johri.

THE 25th state conference of CPI(M) West Bengal committee has called upon Party workers to strengthen links with people and build up movements on people’s issues. The conference noted that discontent of the people against the TMC regime in the state was growing, creating new possibilities of resistance. The Party has to utilise the opportunity and develop struggles on achievable demands.

THE fact that the socio-economic effects of technological change depend upon the property relations within which such change occurs is obvious but often not appreciated.Consider a simple example. Suppose on a certain area, 100 labourers were engaged for harvesting the crop at a total cost of Rs 5000; but the capitalist-landlord decides to use a harvester combine instead. Then the labourers’ income goes down by Rs 5000. The capitalist-landlord’s wage-cost goes down by Rs 5000, which accrues therefore as an addition to his profits.

THE International Solar Alliance (ISA) that met in Delhi recently, is envisaged as a grand inter-governmental coalition of sun-rich nations, i.e., countries that lie fully or partially between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. The objective of the ISA is to facilitate members to ‘collectively address key challenges to scaling up solar energy’. These ‘key challenges’, as understood by the ISA Framework Agreement, include solar finance, solar technologies, innovation, research and development, and capacity building.

ELECTIONS held to the Italian parliament on March 4, had followed the recent electoral trends of the European continent. One, these elections, by Italian standards, witnessed large scale voter abstention. Two, election results show that the ‘establishment parties’ lost badly, while those challenging these parties have won by significantly increasing their vote share.