THIRTY years ago the well-known political activist and a stalwart of street theatre Safdar Hashmi was brutally attacked while he and his colleagues belonging to the street theatre group Jan Natya Manch, were performing a play in a worker's colony near Sahibabad.

The Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has issued the following statements on January 2,2019CPI(M) Congratulates the Women of KeralaTHE Polit Bureau of the CPI(M) extends its warm greetings and congratulations to the women of Kerala and to all the 176 social and mass organisations for the historic `Women’s Wall’ on January 1.The women’s wall with over 55 lakh women participants cutting across caste/community divide and from all walks of life, gave a strong message of unity to uphold the values of the Kerala renaissance for women’s rights and social refor

THE rise of hate crimes in India – cow-related violence and lynchings – has been coupled with extensive use of social media. While fake news and fake videos have often helped spark communal violence, they have also been “celebratory” in nature: participants bragging about being a part of the mob involved in the lynchings and the violence.For a number of commentators, it is the tool – social media and therefore technology – that is the root of the disease of communal violence and mob lynching, not the political forces behind the violence.

IN a New Year address to the country and the world Kim Jong Un-Leader of DPRK marked the continuation of efforts for peace in the Korean region.Noting that the first historic  DPRK-US summit meeting and talks made a great contribution to ensuring peace and security of the Korean peninsula and the region by making a dramatic switchover in the DPRK-US relations, the most hostile relationship on the earth, he stressed that it is the invariable stand of WPK and the DPRK government and his firm will to establish a new relationship between the two countries, set up a permanent and durable peace m

ENTRAPPING all intellectual discussion within a particular discourse is the commonest method that neo-liberalism uses for establishing its hegemony. There was for instance the debate recently on the question of the “autonomy” of the Reserve Bank, where one side wanted control over the RBI by the government and its coterie of “crony capitalists” while the other wanted an RBI catering to the whims and caprices of globalized finance. The question of popular or parliamentary control over the institution was simply never raised.