IN a country with over 5,701 large dams, 619 of them having crossed the age of 50 years, dam safety is a matter of great concern to our nation and addressing it is crucial for the lives and livelihoods of our people. So, any legislation which attempts to provide for surveillance, inspection, operation and maintenance of dams is bound to attract some attention.The Dam Safety Act 2021, passed in the winter session of the Parliament in 2021, and received presidential assent on December 13, 2021, gives us reasons to worry.

IN yet another brutal incident, on January 10, Dheeraj Rajendran, SFI leader of Government Engineering College Painav in Idukki district was stabbed to death by the criminals belonging to the youth congress and Kerala Students Union, the student wing of Congress party in Kerala.The incident occurred during the elections to the students’ union of Kerala Technical University. A group of armed criminals rushed to the campus and unleashed violence as soon as the elections got over. Nikhil Pailee, a youth congress leader and his gang attacked the SFI activists.

FROM the very beginning when the Covid-19 pandemic struck India in early 2020, many questions have arisen about decision-making by the union government on Covid control measures, especially about the extent to which measures instituted have been based on science or other evidence. The importance of these issues is underlined by the fact that serious questions have been raised by science- or health-oriented civil society organisations and also from leading scientists, including members of duly constituted decision-making committees, for instance on imposing lockdowns.

A MEETING of the All-India Kisan Council (AIKC) of the All-India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) was held at the P Sundarayya Vignana Kendram at Hyderabad, capital of Telangana, on January 10-11, 2022. It was the first meeting of the AIKC after the epic victory of the historic nationwide farmers’ struggle in November-December 2021 and was therefore full of enthusiasm.

A PRESS note issued by the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) dated January 12, 2022, has strongly condemned the decision of the Haryana state government to invoke the Essential Service Maintenance Act(ESMA) on the doctors of Haryana state.The CITU stated that the highhanded authoritarian action of the Haryana state BJP government by way of invoking the notorious ESMA, banning the strikes for six months altogether in the health services in the wake of the single-day strike by the doctors under the banner of Haryana Civil Medical Service’s Association (HCMSA), is deplorable.The CITU inform