AFTER over a month of pretence at negotiations over seat-sharing, both the major alliances in Maharashtra finally announced their split on September 25. The Shiv Sena-BJP communal combine which was formed in 1989, broke up after 25 years; and the Congress-NCP alliance which was formed in 1999, split after 15 years. With all these four parties now contesting the state assembly polls separately, it is a completely new situation in Maharashtra today. The Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) is contesting most of the seats; and so also is the BSP.

THERE is a peculiar paradox at the centre of capitalism. Since it is a system that institutes free mobility of workers between sectors, real wage rates should be equalised across occupations which are not too dissimilar from one another in terms of their arduousness, or hazardousness, or unpleasantness, or skill requirements, or intensity of effort etc. In other words, more arduous, more hazardous and more unpleasant jobs should be better paid compared to less arduous, less hazardous or less unpleasant ones, other things being equal (i.e., per unit of homogeneous labour-time).

THE relationship between capital and labour is not confined to the material reality alone, rather it operates as much in the production and communication of knowledge. The penetration of capital into all non-material ideological spheres and the instruments of hegemonic control has become a norm under the neo-liberal regime. The privatisation of electronic media and its control by big and trans-national capital under neo-liberal globalisation is one such example of this phenomena.

A DELEGATION of the CPI(M) led by Sitaram Yechury, Polit Bureau member and MP visited the flood affected areas of Jammu and Kashmir on October 7. In Jammu, the delegation was accompanied by Sham Prasad Kesar, regional secretary of Jammu, Om Prakash, Kishor Kumar, state committee members of the CPI(M) and others. The delegation also visited Government Medical College, Jammu and met the persons who were injured in Pakistan firing at the international border.

The Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has issued the following statement on October 6, 2014.

THE Polit Bureau of the CPI(M) registers its protest over the refusal of the government and the Oil Marketing Companies (OMCs) to reduce the price of diesel, despite the fall in crude oil prices in the international market.

Price of Brent crude, the global oil price benchmark has fallen below $92 a barrel. It is reported that the OMCs are earning Rs 1.90 on every litre of diesel as `over recovery’.