Let us look into the prices of crude oil in the international market, the prices borne by consumers in India, the policies behind them, the claims made by the rulers who formulated these policies, and what is actually happening in practice. Prior to 2002, a system called the Administrative Price Control Mechanism was established and functioning in India. It operated under the control of the Ministry of Petroleum. Its main objective was to regulate crude oil prices so that the burdens of fluctuations in the international market were not passed on to the people.

A state-level seminar organised by the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) on the theme "The Ongoing Assault on the Working Class in India and the Rising Resistance" was held on Wednesday evening at the Makineni Basavapunnaiah Vignana Kendram. The seminar was presided over by CITU State President C H Narsinga Rao.

The present city of Guwahati is surrounded by a number of tribal belts and blocks inhabited by different tribal communities such as Rabha, Karbi, Tiwa, etc. The valuable land adjacent to the city, but under the possession of the tribal people for centuries, is now naturally an attractive proposition for different corporate houses. The BJP government in the state, committed to serve the corporate interests, has been instrumentilised by the corporate houses to grab the tribal land under different pretext, jettisoning all statutory provisions as well as issues pertinent to human rights.

A MAJOR industrial tragedy struck the Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited (RINL) steel plant in Visakhapatnam on June 8 when an explosion triggered a massive fire and caused molten steel to spill inside the facility. RINL is the corporate entity of the Visakhapatnam Steel Plant (VSP). Eight workers were killed and six others sustained injuries in the accident, officials said. The blast occurred at around 4.40 pm when a ladle carrying molten steel exploded, leading to the spillage of hundreds of tonne of molten metal.

CPI(M) Polit Bureau member B V Raghavulu called upon the people and Left parties to prepare for struggles and mass movements against what he described as the dangerous political developments taking place in the country under the policies of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He was speaking at a meeting on “current political developments’ in Vijayawada on May 30.