SOFTWARE patents are like zombies in the zombie film genre that Hollywood has made popular. They just refuse to die. As many times you kill them, they revive again and keep coming back. In India, we thought we had killed and buried software patents with the Amended Patent Act in 2005, and again in the Patents Manual, 2011, both of which effectively deny software patents.

THE All India Democratic Women's Association (AIDWA) successfully conducted a bus jatha across Telangana against the new Excise policy of the K Chandrashekar Rao government permitting wide sale of cheap liquor in the state. Strongly opposing the move, AIDWA took up statewide campaign and at the end, the government had to roll back its decision to sale cheap liquor through the State Beverages Corporation. The bus jatha went across the state from August 17 to 28, and group meetings and public rallies were held at village, mandal and division levels.

THE strike by the workers of Kanan Devan Hills Plantations (Tatas) in Munnar has sparked heated discussions. Vested interests widely propagated that the strike was against trade unions. A few monopoly media, as usual, has used this opportunity to castigate the Left politics and Left-affiliated trade unions. Media oraginsations that usually ignore and mock at workers’ agitations were enthusiastic to describe even minute details of the Munnar strike.

IN a first of its kind, more than hundred mass organisations in West Bengal have formed a common platform to fight on burning issues of the people. Trade Unions, peasant organisations, teachers’ organisations, student-youth-women organisations and representative organisations of all sections of people have joined in this platform, which has been named ‘Bengal Platform of Mass Organisations” (BPMO). This platform will organise a mass convention on September  28 to finalise the schedule of movements.

THE adoption of a federal, democratic and secular Constitution in Nepal is a historic occasion. The protracted struggle of the Nepalese people against feudal authoritarianism and for democracy has culminated in the establishment of a federal, democratic and secular State. Eight years after the interim Constitution, after a tortuous political process, the Constituent Assembly voted overwhelmingly (507 out of 601) to approve the Constitution.