Our Party gives emphasis for abolition of castes. It is true that without freeing dalits, the caste abolition is not possible. But at the same time BCs also have some genuine problems. Our documents never refer them as if they are our enemies on par with capitalists and landlords. Why our Party is silent or less emphatic on their problems?

R Jeyaraj, Trichy, Tamilnadu

“WE are garment workers, we are meted out injustice. They say henceforth double PF would not be paid to us. We shall not work till we get it; even if we have to die for it.”  Anasuyamma, a worker of AKR garments was telling us with anger on her face. “You are injured so much, yet you talk of fighting”, we interjected. Pat came her answer. “Yes, we shall not give up our right.”  Anasuyamma’s lower leg, Jockey Garment’s 20-year old Asha’s head were bandaged for serious wounds.

SINCE the middle of February, 2016, more than one crore beedi workers, mainly in the rural areas, have lost their meagre daily earnings due to shut down by beedi manufacturers in protest against the health ministry’s notification increasing the size of pictorial health warning on tobacco containing products including beedis. This is taking place at a time when vast rural areas in different states are reeling under draught and the rural people are deprived of their earnings from agriculture and the failure of MNREGA to provide alternative jobs in rural areas.

ON this May Day, CITU

Greets the working class and toiling people of the entire world and our own country, India;

Expresses solidarity to the fight of the working class and people of all the continents against the exploitative international finance driven neoliberal capitalist order;

Extends solidarity to the people in socialist countries and their struggles in defence of socialism in their countries; reaffirms its confidence that imperialist conspiracies to undermine socialism and restore capitalism in these countries would be decisively defeated

ISSUES concerning social justice surfaced strongly during the celebrations of 125TH birth anniversary of B R Ambedkar. This emerged in response to BJP and Sangh Parivaar's ongoing efforts to reinstate predatory and obscurantist opinions and ideology, and out of the struggle against these efforts. The concrete expression of such a resistance is visible in the movements in University of Hyderabad (UoH) and Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in Delhi among others.