Message from the Assembly Polls

Manmohan Singh has described the outcome of the recent Assembly elections as a victory for the UPA and its policies. Considering that the NDA had no real stake in these elections, Manmohan Singh's claim regarding a UPA victory may sound like an obvious truism. But the claim is actually made not in relation to the NDA. The Prime Minister also cannot be unaware of the fact that his own Congress party......Full text

Polit Bureau Communique

The Party Polit Bureau met at Patna on May 16-17 to review the latest situation including Assembly election results and our performance and some other key issues facing the Party. The discussion on Assembly polls is not included here since it is covered in the feature within. Excerpts from the other main points discussed and decided are summarized below..........Full text

Share Markets Crash The Manufactured Crisis

As the second anniversary of UPA government approached, it was clear that a correction in the markets was overdue as the markets had reached dizzying heights in the last 1 year. Still it was shocking that investor wealth of Rs. 2.5 Lakh crore was wiped out in 2 days of trading last week. At the time of this writing, on the morning of 22nd May, trading has been suspended in the stock market with Sensex crashing by 1,000 points,.....Full text

Court's Supreme Contempt for Slum Dwellers

A Supreme Court Bench headed by Justice Ruma Pal, in response to a petition by the Nangla Machi slum dwellers against the Delhi High Court's order for mass demolitions of their homes without any relocation, declared, 'If you can't afford to stay in Delhi, go elsewhere!' Justice Pal is someone who is very touchy about the fact that people may have contempt for Court decrees (she is one of the Judges who sentenced Arundhati Roy to a night in jail for committing 'contempt of court' in speaking out against the Supreme Court's anti-poor bias in 2000),.....Full text

The issues beyond the surface

A Commentary on the Reservation issue

To Reserve or not Reserve is hardly the question. For hidden beneath the veneer of these questions are disturbing and challenging issues, that the HRD Minister Arjun Singh, UPA or the always-excited prime time channels would rather not address.,.....Full text

In the Shadow of a Police State…

Saffron Witch-hunt of CPI(ML) in Jharkhand

  The CPI(ML) General Secretary Comrade Dipankar Bhattacharya is the latest target of the BJP Government's witch-hunt of CPI(ML) leaders in Jharkhand. Comrade Dipankar along with four others face the prospect of conviction under a range of charges including that of attempted murder. Their crime? They led a March to the Assembly of the newly formed Jharkhand State on March 1, 2001 to protest against a spate of incidents of police brutality.,.....Full text

BJP Must Not Be Allowed to Reduce Jharkhand to a Police State

[Excerpts from Comrade Dipankar's Letter from Birsa Munda Central Jail, Ranchi , March 4, 2001 .].......Full text

CPI(ML) Performance in Recent Assembly Elections

In the just concluded Assembly elections, our Party had put up 14 candidates in Assam , 25 in West Bengal , 10 in Tamil Nadu, 1 in Kerala and 4 in Pondicherry . Of all these states, it was only in Assam where the Party had hoped to win any possible victory. In the remaining states, our objective was to conduct a vigorous election campaign and try to increase our votes........Full text

Signs of Deepening of the Agrarian Crisis

Within a couple of months after the Union Budget, in the absense of any fresh official data, it would be difficult to assert with comprehensive data that the agrarian crisis in the country is deepening. But whatever limited data, official and otherwise, are available they indicate sure signs of the crisis deepening in the coming agricultural year.........Full text

Farmers' Suicides in Maharashtra

Over 14000 farmers in different states of India have committed suicide between 2001 and 2006. Death is haunting the farmers of Vidarbha region of Maharashtra . Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra are competing with each other to stake the highest claim to farmers' suicides in India .........Full text

Wheat Pricing: Withdrawing "Support" from MSP

Despite a normal monsoon last year, the announcement to import five lakh tonnes of wheat from Australia took the country by surprise because during the time of this announcement, the production estimates were around 740 lakh tonnes while consumption was expected to be around 720 lakh tonnes.......Full text

Globalisation and Working Class Resistance: Myths and Reality

The word globalisation has become an integral part of everyday parlance in the country. The ruling classes and their parties, and large sections of the mainstream media present globalisation as a big boon for our economy. Even when they have to deal with the consequences of the ongoing economic policies of reckless liberalisation and globalisation – the starvation deaths and debt-induced suicides that are transforming rural India into a veritable graveyard.......Full text

Party School

Notes on Party Programme Part- III (This is the third and concluding part of the article. The first two parts have been published in the April and May issues of Liberation. - Editor) ........Full text

Update

Struggle Against Disbanding of Amir Das Commission Continues Outrage continues to spill out against the Nitish Government's move to protect the prominent politicians linked to the Ranveer Sena by disbanding the Justice Amir Das Commission probing political linkages of the Sena. On May 1, leaders of the CPI(ML) and CPI, including CPI(ML) State Secretary Ramjatan Sharma, AIALA Vice President Pawan Sharma, CPI Central Committee member Jalaluddin Ansari, Shatrughna Prasad Singh and Ram Naresh Pandey, MLA, met the CM Nitish Kumar and demanded that the Amir Das Commission be reinstated and allowed to complete its probe.........Full text

Activities

AISA's Militant protest against Electricity price hike and for regular supply of power

Rozgar Adhikar Campaign

AIPWA Mahapanchayat in Lucknow ........Full text

International US Immigrant Workers Movement: Birth of the New Civil Rights Movement? May 1, 2006 made history. It was the day when the traditional May Day was resurrected by the new immigrant workers in the US . Despite the US origins of May Day, it has been wiped out from peoples' consciousness. The new immigrant rights movement changed all of that. A multitude of organizations -immigrant rights organizations, progressive sections of the labour movement and unions, left political parties and religious organizations - and multinational workers resolved to organize a national 'day without immigrants.' May 1st was chosen for its special symbolism as an international workers' day. It was no ordinary day of protest but a national day of boycott with the key slogans of 'no work', 'no school', and 'no selling, no buying'..........Full text Big Achievements, Bigger Challenges Ahead The sustained high tide in mass movement which followed last November's SPA-Maoist 12-point agreement and which compelled the pig-headed Gyanendra restore the Parliament in April 2006, has now forced the present dispensation make a proclamation more radical than normally expected of a Nepali Congress-led government.....Full text