THE ninth conference of Paschimbanga Rajya Pratibandhi Sammilani, an affiliate of the National Platform for the Rights of the Disabled, was held in Krishnanagar, Nadia, on June 11-12, 2022.

The conference was attended by 650 delegates, including 125 women from 22 districts.

Representing a membership of one lakh fifty-three thousand, the conference kicked off with a huge procession where more than 6,000 people turned up braving the sweltering heat.

THE world has been facing a food crisis of a magnitude that has not been seen for many decades. The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) has warned that "the number of people facing acute food insecurity and requiring urgent life-saving food assistance and livelihood support continues to grow at an alarming rate".

ADAM Smith and David Ricardo had been haunted by the idea of capitalism ending up in a “stationary state”, by which they meant a stable state of zero growth. Marx used the term “simple reproduction” to describe such a state, where there is no net addition to production capacity and the economy just reproduces itself at the same level period after period. The Indian economy appears headed for such a state.The Modi government’s propaganda machine, as usual, is working overtime to paint a rosy picture of the economy; but the reality is the very opposite.

IT is usually said that everyone is equal before the law. But reality teaches us something else. In practice we find that law is not equal for the big and the mighty and the poor and vulnerable. If big people occupy government lands, the government tries to regularise them by bringing special government orders.  But if poor people demand 30 yards of land, they are branded as encroachers and their houses are razed to ground with bulldozers and their houses are set on fire to create fear.

Under the LDF government, a total of 2,34,567 land deeds have been distributed across the state in the last six years.