HUNDREDS of peasants from the states neighbouring Delhi marched to parliament on February 18 demanding remunerative prices for their produce, settlement of arrears of sugarcane farmers, against dilution of APMC Act and other related matters. A delegation including Basudeb Acharia, Saidul Haque, Hannan Mollah, Amra Ram and others submitted a detailed memorandum on the demands to the agriculture minister after the march.
THE Aam Aadmi Party leader, Arvind Kejriwal, has spoken at a CII meeting in Delhi recently about his party’s economic policy outlook. In the absence of a full-fledged economic policy document of the AAP, Kejriwal’s remarks in the speech gives an indication of the ideology and policy approach of the AAP.
Kejriwal said, “Government has no business in business. Government should not do business. All this should be left to the private sector”. He also declared that he was against the inspector raj and licence raj.
USING the excuse that two of his predecessors – BJP’s Jaswant Singh in 2004 and Congress’s Pranab Mukherjee in 2009 – used the occasion of seeking a vote on account on the eve of general elections to make a political declaration on the so-called economic achievements of their supportive governments, P Chidambaram let loose a string of expletives claiming miraculous economic achievements during the last ten years of the UPA government.
The participants came from different parts of Maharashtra, but a big majority was from Sholapur. On the conclusion of the sit-in dharna and demonstration, the participants courted arrest.
The dharna of the beedi workers was joined by members of Rashtriya Bal Kamgar Prakalp Shikshak Karmachari Sanghatana.
ON January 30, thousands of workers of the Chenani-Nashri Four Lane and Tunnel road project organised a militant protest demonstration at Jammu against the government’s inaction about and indifference towards their genuine and legitimate demands. The demonstration was organised by the Chenani-Nashri Four Lane and Tunnel Construction Workers Union, affiliated to the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), at Chenani.
DESPITE all the hype being created about the latest ‘Namo-Raga’ tune by the corporate media, the next central government is going to be yet another coalition government and it will be shaped only after the elections, asserted CPI(M) Polit Bureau member and Party leader in Rajya Sabha, Sitaram Yechury. He said this has been the history in our country post-Emergency period, from the first Janata Party government to the latest Manmohan Singh government and it is going to be repeated in the coming elections too.
WEST Bengal witnessed one of the most horrific instances of rape being used as a political tool in Amta in Howrah, West Bengal. In order to take revenge for the political defeat in the panchayat elections, TMC goons broke open the door of the house of their opponent and gang raped 27 year old housewife along with one of her 43-year old in-law. The incident took place on 4th February 2014 at about 10.30pm, in Muktirchak gram in Howrah under Amta police station limits. Both the housewife and her in-law are admitted in Uluberia hospital with serious injuries.
IN what has come as a shocking incident, unheard of in the history of Kerala, a woman sweeper working in the Congress block committee office at Nilambur in Malappuram district was found dead in a pond in Chulliyod, near Nilambur. Two persons including a staff member of Aryadan Muhammed, the state minister of electricity, were arrested in connection with this barbaric incident. The victim was identified as Nilambur Kovilakathumuri Radha (49) who was cruelly raped and then strangled to death.
EVEN as the Delhi maneuverings to decide on the bifurcation issue reached a feverish pitch, the working people of all three regions of Andhra Pradesh are unitedly on struggle path centering around their genuine demands. The 1.8 lakh strong Anganwadi workers and helpers in the state are conducting indefinite hunger strikes demanding hike in wages. At the same time in support of over 60,000 outsourced sanitation workers in municipalities, nine workers’ unions undertook a five-day long strike across the state demanding hike in wages.
AFTER regaining the prime minister’s post in 2012, Shinzo Abe has been rarely out of the news. An avowed right wing nationalist, Abe has been trying to make dramatic changes in the country’s domestic and foreign policies. Unlike his immediate predecessors, Abe has not shirked away from identifying the neighbouring China as Japan’s main rival in the region.