THE executive committee of the All India Peoples Science Network (AIPSN) met on March 17-18 in Chennai and decided to join the Global March for Science to be held on April 14. The AIPSN sees a pattern in the attacks on science and reason across the world. The US president Trump’s denial of climate science, and the current Indian central government ministers’ rejection of evolution, and other scientific advances, are prime examples.
VARIOUS women’s organisations held a militant protest demonstration outside the Vasant Kunj (North) police station on March 20, against the inordinate delay by the police in arresting Prof Atul Johri who has been accused of sexual harassment by nine women students. Professor Atul Johri is a senior professor at the School of Life Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University. The harassment of girl students in JNU is highly condemnable and shameful. Nine students from his laboratory have registered a police complaint against Prof Johri.
THE BJP has suffered a shock defeat in the two by-elections to the Lok Sabha seats of Gorakhpur and Phulpur. In the 2014 Lok Sabha election, these two seats were won by Yogi Adityanath, now chief minister and Keshav Prasad Maurya, now deputy chief minister with a margin of over 3 lakh votes each. This time around the seats were won by Samajwadi Party candidates who were supported by its arch rival, the BSP.
THE 25th state conference of CPI(M) West Bengal committee has called upon Party workers to strengthen links with people and build up movements on people’s issues. The conference noted that discontent of the people against the TMC regime in the state was growing, creating new possibilities of resistance. The Party has to utilise the opportunity and develop struggles on achievable demands. Fight against twin dangers – TMC and BJP – that feed each other with competitive communalism and polarization, has to be conducted with intense vigour.
CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury condemned the pre-planned, barbarous attacks that have been let loose by the BJP on the common people in the state of Tripura and demanded an immediate end to this barbarism.
THE fact that the socio-economic effects of technological change depend upon the property relations within which such change occurs is obvious but often not appreciated.
AFTER months of hard work and sleepless nights, candidates who appeared and were preparing to appear in a job test conducted by the Staff Selection Commission (SSC) were shocked when the news of alleged leak of a question paper reached them. Screenshots of a question paper of Combined Graduate Level (Tier-II) examinations, along with answers, were found circulating on social media. There were also report of mass copying. The SSC has subsequently cancelled the exam held on February 21, 2018.
THE International Solar Alliance (ISA) that met in Delhi recently, is envisaged as a grand inter-governmental coalition of sun-rich nations, i.e., countries that lie fully or partially between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. The objective of the ISA is to facilitate members to ‘collectively address key challenges to scaling up solar energy’. These ‘key challenges’, as understood by the ISA Framework Agreement, include solar finance, solar technologies, innovation, research and development, and capacity building.
THE Maharashtra state social media workshop was held on March 4, 2018 at BTR Bhavan, Belapur. A call for the same was given at the just concluded 22nd state conference of the Party in Sangli and all district committees were asked to send 2-3 Party members for the meet.
ELECTIONS held to the Italian parliament on March 4, had followed the recent electoral trends of the European continent. One, these elections, by Italian standards, witnessed large scale voter abstention. Two, election results show that the ‘establishment parties’ lost badly, while those challenging these parties have won by significantly increasing their vote share. And finally, the voters did not give any party complete majority, thus throwing up a hung assembly.