THE central executive committee of the Students’ Federation of India, in a statement issued on December 21, has strongly condemned the cold-blooded attack on Subhash Jakhar, SFI Sikar district secretary by the RSS-ABVP criminals. He is admitted to SK Hospital in a critical condition with 25 stitches on his head.  SFI has also condemned in strongest possible words the police attack on the protest demanding immediate arrest of the culprits behind the heinous crime. Hundreds of SFI activists were arrested by the police in Sikar. Many were manhandled and picked up even from the office of SFI.

IT is only the ideologues of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, past and present, who have always opposed the idea of secular State because the idea of Hindutva is in antagonistic contradiction with the “basic structure of secular, republican and democratic constitution of India.” It deserves to be clearly emphasised that every controversy around the meaning and concept of Indian secularism has originated from the Sangh Parivar and the RSS swayam sevaks whether Lal Krishna Advani famous for his castigating the secularists as ‘pseudo’ or Rajnath Singh, a loyal RSS swayam sevak and the home ministe

THIS month the International Food Policy Research Institute has released the Global Hunger Index, 2015. The index clearly shows that even though the levels of hunger have declined since the turn of the last century, the number of hungry people in the world remains enormously large particularly in Africa, South of the Saharas and South Asia. Worldwide, the Food and Agriculture Organisation projects that there are 795 million hungry people, ie, one in every nine persons is hungry.

CONGRATULATING the working class of the country for the magnificent and unprecedented countrywide joint general strike on September 2, 2015, the general council of CITU called upon it to further strengthen its unity and take the struggle to a higher level. It asserted that the growing discontent among the working class and the common people in general against the policies being pursued by the Modi led BJP government at the centre provided an opportunity for this.

 Bodies such as Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), Delhi Science Forum and others have been flagging the issue of air pollution from diesel vehicles for years. They have been pointing out that small particulate matter, particularly below 2.5 micron size (PM 2.5) and Nitrous Oxides (NOx) omissions are much higher for diesel vehicles and these are dangerous to health. Increasingly, health and air quality experts around the world have been concerned with the rise of pollutant levels in towns and cities, particularly from diesel vehicles.