THE strike by the workers of Kanan Devan Hills Plantations (Tatas) in Munnar has sparked heated discussions. Vested interests widely propagated that the strike was against trade unions. A few monopoly media, as usual, has used this opportunity to castigate the Left politics and Left-affiliated trade unions. Media oraginsations that usually ignore and mock at workers’ agitations were enthusiastic to describe even minute details of the Munnar strike.

IN a first of its kind, more than hundred mass organisations in West Bengal have formed a common platform to fight on burning issues of the people. Trade Unions, peasant organisations, teachers’ organisations, student-youth-women organisations and representative organisations of all sections of people have joined in this platform, which has been named ‘Bengal Platform of Mass Organisations” (BPMO). This platform will organise a mass convention on September  28 to finalise the schedule of movements.

THE adoption of a federal, democratic and secular Constitution in Nepal is a historic occasion. The protracted struggle of the Nepalese people against feudal authoritarianism and for democracy has culminated in the establishment of a federal, democratic and secular State. Eight years after the interim Constitution, after a tortuous political process, the Constituent Assembly voted overwhelmingly (507 out of 601) to approve the Constitution.

TO MARK the 125TH birth anniversary of B R Ambedkar, a seminar was organised in Coimbatore by the Coimbatore District Committee of Tamil Nadu Untouchability Eradication Front (TNUEF). CPI(M) Polit Bureau member Brinda Karat delivered the special address.

ON his way to release the Kannada Daily at Kasaragod on September 10, Sitaram Yechury, CPI(M) general secretary, visited Sundara Malekudiya who was admitted to a hospital in Mangaluru on September 3.48 year old Sundara Malekudiya, a tribal residing at the hilly area of Neriya village of  Dakshina Kannada district, was assaulted by a landlord, Gopala Gowda with a weed-cutting machine on July 27. He had suffered serious injury on his left elbow and has lost two fingers in his right hand.