Unlimited Corporate Funding: Subversion of Democracy

THE Modi government has taken another surreptitious step to harness corporate funding for the BJP and to subject the political system to the sway of big money.While presenting the Union Budget, the finance minister had announced that the government would introduce “electoral bonds” as a means of funding for political parties. According to this concept, anyone wanting to contribute money to a political party can, through a bank, purchase an electoral bond for a specified amount. This bond can then be put into the account of a political party. The noteworthy feature of this bond is that th

The Reserve Bank on Demonetisation

THE Reserve Bank of India has just come out with a document titled Macroeconomic Impact of Demonetisation: A Preliminary Assessment, which, while conceding that demonetisation did have an adverse impact on output, suggests that this impact would have got over by mid-February, because of the re-monetisation that has occurred in the interim.

TELANGANA: Communists Will Give a Fitting Reply to Fascist Forces

CPI(M) Polit Bureau member Brinda Karat warned that the Red brigade would not keep quiet, if attempts are made to obstruct the “Polikeka” meeting – the struggle convention for social justice, scheduled to be organised in Hyderabad on March 19 as a culmination to the five-month-long Mahajana Padayatra undertaken by the CPI(M) in Telangana. She made it clear that as the chief minister, it is the responsibility of K Chandrasekhar Rao to see that the “Polikeka” meeting is allowed to be conducted peacefully.

NAGPUR: People Give Fitting Reply to VC’s RSS-Dictated Action

THE Rashtrasant Tukdoji Maharaj Nagpur University every year organises seminars under the Dr Ambedkar Study Centre of the University, which is supposed to be an autonomous body. This year on March 18-19, 2017, a two day seminar was organised on the subject “Decay of Democracy – Challenges and Solutions”. It was decided that this seminar would be inaugurated by Sitaram Yechury, general secretary of the CPI(M).

National Health Policy 2017: Assurance for Whom?

THE government has finally approved the National Health Policy-2017, bringing to an end a two year long process. A draft of the policy was available since mid-2015 but it is believed that the government, at the Niti Ayog’s behest had been unhappy with some specific parts of the earlier draft that was critical of the private sector.Experience with past National Health Policy documents (we have had two in the past – one in 1983 and one in 2002) have not been particularly positive.

The ‘RSS Factor’ in Dalit Politics

AFTER the massive win in Uttar Pradesh, the prime minister has announced that the stage is set for a ‘New India’ which is based on development and not on the politics of caste or religion. This claim is based on the understanding that the people of UP defied the caste and religious equations this time to defeat the forces of ‘castiest’ and ‘communal politics of BSP and SP-INC combine’ in order to support social harmony and development in the state.

On Adityanath as Chief Minister of UP

The Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has issued the following statement on March 19THE appointment of Yogi Adityanath as the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh is a shocking decision by the BJP. This choice by the RSS, executed by its political arm, the BJP, is a deliberate move which bodes ill for the state.Adityanath is a known Hindutva fanatic who has a record of inciting communal violence, having a number of criminal cases pending against him.

SC Must Adjudicate on Matter Before it

The Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has issued the following statement on March 22, 2017THE suggestion made by the Chief Justice of India J S Khehar, asking the parties concerned in the Ayodhya dispute, to settle the matter through talks, is superfluous and unwise.The Supreme Court is to hear the appeals against the Allahabad High Court judgement on the Ayodhya matter. Instead of doing so, the chief justice has asked the parties to go for an out of court settlement.There is a long history of negotiations and talks in the matter.

On the Ideology of RSS – I

THE ABVP’s onslaught of terror and violence in Ramjas College, Delhi University should serve as an important reminder of the fundamentally anti-democratic nature of its parent organisation, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and all its affiliates. We must not look at the hooliganism of ABVP as an aberrant act but instead as something that is integral to RSS ideology.

Otto Rene Castillo: “The Poet is a Moral Conduct”

One daythe apoliticalintellectualsof my countrywill be interrogatedby the simplestof our people. They will be askedwhat they didwhen their nation died outslowly,like a sweet firesmall and alone. SOME of us may be familiar with these verses from a poem titled “Apolitical Intellectuals” by Otto Rene Castillo. Fifty years ago, in March 1967, when he had barely crossed thirty years of age, this Guatemalan poet, a revolutionary and a guerilla fighter, was ambushed and captured along with another member of the guerrilla group, Nora Paiz and 13 local campesinos.

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