IT is eight years since Narendra Modi became prime minister of India, heading an NDA government. The BJP is observing this anniversary in a big way, combining it with their election campaign for some state assembly elections due later this year, Gujarat being one of the important ones. The ruling party organised a meeting of all its national and state office bearers recently in Jaipur where a long statement narrating various achievements of the Modi government was issued. Also declared in this meeting was a triple slogan for marking the anniversary from May 30 to June 15.

The Tamil Nadu Untouchability Eradication Front (TNUEF), in association with other dalit organisations in the state, has organised a series of programmes across the state to garner public support for a special Act to prevent honour killings which are rising in recent years in the state. As part of it, they organised a state-wide demonstration programme on May 28.CPI(M) Polit Bureau member Subhashini Ali, speaking at a demonstration held at Saidapet, Chennai, stressed the need for a special Act to prevent social evils like honour killings.

Following the call of the Left parties to launch united and concerted nationwide struggles against price rise and unemployment, between May 25-31, various forms of protests were held across the country. Below we publish some of the reports received as we go to press.Tamil Nadu: THE CPI(M) Tamil Nadu state committee held protests across the state from May 25 to 31 against the Modi-led Union government, as per the call given by the Left parties.

AFTER the relentless hype about Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum, Solana, Dogecoin, LUNA, etc., for the last couple of years, we are now witnessing their complete meltdown. The hype was primarily driven by eye-popping increases in valuations of all the major cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin had gone from around USD 4,000 to USD 64,000, a sixteen fold increase, in 20 months. Other cryptocurrencies had even more ridiculous price increases in the same time period – Ethereum had a 50 fold increase, Solana 500 times, and LUNA had a 1,000 times increase.

CENTRAL banks all over the capitalist world are raising, or are about to raise, interest rates as a means of countering the currently rampant inflation, which is certain to push a world economy that is barely recovering from the effect of the pandemic, back towards stagnation and greater unemployment.Of course the Federal Reserve Board of the US which sets the standard in this respect for all other central banks, claims otherwise.