IT is to highlight the issues of crores of  workers, peasants, agricultural workers, artisans and other toiling people, to emphatically voice their demands for better work, better working conditions, better lives and better future for their children, that CITU, AIKS and AIAWU have jointly called the ‘Mazdoor Kisan Sangharsh Rally’ on September 5, 2018 before the parliament.

CPI(M) Polit Bureau has issued the following statement on June 19THE decision of the BJP to withdraw from the coalition government with the PDP in Jammu & Kashmir at this particular moment has the potential of creating greater political instability in the state. It signifies the total political failure of the BJP’s approach in Jammu and Kashmir.This alliance was untenable since the beginning.

BILLIONAIRE financier George Soros has set financial markets aflutter by suggesting that a new world financial crisis is in the offing. In a speech he gave recently to a think-tank, he underscored the outflow of finance capital from the third world which is likely to catch these economies in a cycle of exchange rate depreciations and austerity. And he talked specifically of the European Union facing an “existential crisis” on account of three factors: its territorial disintegration as exemplified by Brexit, austerity, and the refugee crisis.

AFTER years of wavering by India despite continuous prodding by the US, first under the UPA and then even by the BJP, it appears that another of the “foundational agreements” between the US and India on military collaboration is on the verge of being signed. Three such agreements are part of the package required to be signed by all US allies to allow the latter to acquire and effectively operate advanced US military equipment inter-operably with US forces.

THE policy announced of lateral entry into the civil service at the level of joint secretary has raised a number of questions.  The central government has advertised for ten posts of joint secretary to be recruited by a committee headed by the cabinet secretary. The applicants can be from either the public sector, universities, or, the private sector including those working in multinational companies.  The requirement is that they should have 15 years experience in the job. This is just a thin end of the wedge.  Lateral entry is being pushed by none other than the prime minister himself.