THE suicide of Rohith Vemula, a research scholar, has stirred an intense debate on the conditions of dalit students in Indian universities and educational institutions. Many new instances that were earlier sought to be hushed up, saw the light of the day, like the travails of Mahesh Balmiki, an IIT- BHU (Banaras Hindu University) student, who thought of selling his kidney to pay off his loans. He states that he could not find a buyer “because they ask for the caste of the donor”. A dalit kidney might not function similar to that of an upper-caste kidney!

THE Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who has become a frequent visitor to India, was in the Indian capital yet again, in the second week of December. This is his third visit to India since taking over as prime minister. Abe had struck a good personal rapport with the former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Japan and India have grown extremely close during the ten years of UPA rule. New Delhi's tilt towards the anti-China alliance led by the United States and Japan alliance had started during the UPA rule.

THE 19th Delhi state conference of SFI was concluded successfully on January 15-16 in Comrade Vijendra Sharma Manch and Martyr Comrade Shakeel Ahmad Baksh Hall. The hall of the conference was named after Shakeel Ahmad Baksh who was killed when he intervened in a case of eve teasing in Jamia in 1996. Comrade Vijendra’s name needs no introduction for anyone in students’ and teachers’ movement.A rally and public meeting was organised on January 15,  in North Campus, Delhi University. This rally was also joined by the flag march of 15th all India conference that has started from Shimla.

MANIK Sarkar, chief minister of Tripura and the Polit Bureau member of the CPI(M) visited Hyderabad on January 22 and expressed solidarity with the students protesting against the institutional murder of research scholar Rohith Vemula.

ON January 19, 2016, over one lakh workers, peasants and agricultural labourers courted arrest at 73 district and tehsil centres in 28 districts of Maharashtra, in response to the joint call given by the CITU, AIKS and AIAWU at a state-level convention at Parbhani on October 31, 2015 (See report in People’s Democracy/Loklahar, November 16-22, 2015).As per information gathered from all the districts, a total of 1,33,127 working people participated in the state-wide action on January 19. Of these, over one lakh courted arrest.