Privatisation of Public Services Hurts Poor, Creates Inequality

EFFORTS to privatise public goods and services have helped fuel an increasingly unequal society, says a new report by a US-based research and policy centre.The report, “How privatisation increases inequality,” examines the ways in which the insertion of private interests into the provision of public goods and services hurts poor individuals and families, and people of colour in the United States, a model that is fast spreading across the world, including in developing countries, such as India.As India embarks on pushing direct benefits transfer (DBT) in a bid to plug leakages in the distrib

One Country, One Election: Profoundly Undemocratic

THE BJP national executive which met last week has called Prime Minister Narendra Modi's proposal for simultaneous elections to the Lok Sabha and state legislatures "another path breaking initiative". This is hardly surprising considering that the BJP election manifesto had called for simultaneous elections.Modi has put out this proposal as part of a package for electoral reforms. Last September, President Pranab Mukherjee had endorsed the idea.

On Land Issues

Resolution adopted at the Central Committee Meeting held on January 6-8, 2017 at Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala.THE Communist Party of India (Marxist) expresses its solidarity and extends its support to the farmers who are struggling against illegal and forcible land acquisition in many states subverting the beneficial provisions of 2013 Land Acquisition Act.After the assumption of power by BJP and its allies at the centre, the attempts to subvert the existing land reform, land acquisition, land lease and land use laws gathered pace.

New Fighter Aircraft Deal – Again?

THE ink has barely dried on the acquisition of the French Rafale fighter aircraft, and India has once again entered the international arms market with the intention to procure hundreds of fighter jets, albeit with the proviso that they be manufactured in India. The Rafale deal, for outright purchase of 36 twin-engined medium-weight multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA) worth around $ 7.8 billion (Rs 50,000 crores), did not quite turn out to be ‘the mother of all defence deals’ it was once hailed as.

Legislate “Rohith Act”

Resolution adopted at the Central Committee Meeting held on January 6-8, 2017 at Thiruvananthapuram, KeralaTHE Central Committee of the CPI(M) in its session at Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, expresses solidarity with all those organisations of dalits, students, women and democratic sections who are observing the first anniversary of the institutional murder of Rohith Vemula on January 17, 2017. It is a travesty of justice that a brilliant, young dalit student was pushed into committing suicide because of the brutal insensitivity and caste prejudice displayed by two cabinet ministers

Implications of NFSA implementation in Kerala

Resolution adopted at the Central Committee Meeting held from January 6-8, 2017 at Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. THE Central Committee meeting of CPI(M) being held in Thiruvananthapuram demands the government of India to take immediate steps to increase the foodgrain quota for the state of Kerala.The state of Kerala through long decades of struggle came to have statutory and universal rationing.

Successful Session of the Indian History Congress At Thiruvananthapuram

THE Indian History Congress successfully held its 77th annual session from December 28-30, 2016 at Thiruvananthapuram, hosted by the University of Kerala.

THE BOLSHEVIKS MUST ASSUME POWER

Commemorating the centenary of the October Revolution, we shall be regularly publishing in this column, writings, essays, articles and reproduce important documents concerning the Russian Revolution, 1917. THE Bolsheviks, having obtained a majority in the Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies of both capitals, can and must take state power into their own hands.They can because the active majority of revolutionary elements in the two chief cities is large enough to carry the people with it, to overcome the opponent’s resistance, to smash him, and to gain and retain pow

Demonetisation and State Repression in Bastar

RECENT cases of action against adivasi rights activists, lawyers and intellectuals have shown that demonetisation has become one more tool of State repression. At the start of the demonetisation drive, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, claimed that this measure would strike at the root of the funding to ‘terrorist groups and maoist insurgents”. This claim was further buttressed by unverified police media leak that the ‘maoists’ had stashed rupees seven thousand crores in the jungles and were now forcing villagers and sympathisers to exchange their old notes for new ones.

We Do Not Live in “Post Truth” World, We Live in a World of Lies & We Always Have

WE do not live in a “post-truth” world, neither in the Middle East nor in the West – nor in Russia, for that matter. We live in a world of lies. And we always have lived in a world of lies.Just take a look at the wreckage of the Middle East with its history of people’s popular republics and its hateful dictators. They feast on dishonesty, although they all – bar the late Muammar al-Gaddafi – demand regular elections to make-believe their way back to power.Now, I suppose, it is we who have regular elections based on lies. So maybe Trump and the Arab autocrats will get on rather well.

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