THE collapse of the Soviet Union was a sigh of relief to the imperialist forces of the world who were desperately trying to suffocate the emerging alternative that in a lightning pace not only could achieve the growth and development of the advanced economies of the world but more importantly could offer an alternative system against the global hegemony of capital.In 1931, Stalin remarked that Russia was about fifty to hundred years behind the level of growth of productive forces achieved by advanced capitalist countries and that gap needs to be covered within ten years.

SO here we are once again, regular like the seasons, with Delhi and the entire Indi-Gangetic plains right down to West Bengal shrouded in a grey haze of pollutants as visible in photographs from space.  13 of the world’s 20 worst polluted cities or towns in the world are in India, including Delhi, satellite towns and other urban centres in northern and eastern India. This has now become such a hardy and recurrent annual feature that it may as well be declared yet another festival of which we already have so many in this country.

INSAF Yatra (march for justice), organised by the DYFI West Bengal state committee, began from Cooch Behar on November 3, its 44th Foundation Day. The key slogans of the march are: ‘Ensure the effective rights to work and education. Oust the corrupt and the rioters. Save the country, save the state’. With these aims in mind, DYFI leaders and workers will walk around 2,000 km from Cooch Behar in north Bengal to Kakdwip in the south over the next two months. The target is to touch a huge number of villages, cities and towns in the state.

IN an economy like ours where the work-force is not neatly divided into “the employed” and “the unemployed”, and instead there is massive and growing casualisation of work, measuring unemployment is a tricky business. It necessarily means asking a person how much work that person got over a certain period in the past, because of which the unemployment measure varies depending on what period is taken into account and how much work over this period is taken to constitute employment.

Enable GingerCannot connect to Ginger Check your internet connectionor reload the browserDisable in this text fieldRephraseRephrase current sentenceEdit in Ginger×ONE of the ways federalism and the powers of the elected state legislatures are being undermined, is by governors sitting over the bills passed by the legislatures without taking any decision regarding them.According to the constitution, bills passed by the state legislatures have to be given assent by the governor in order to become law.