Presidential Election: Beyond the Politics of Pretension

The office of the President of India is the highest constitutional office in India’s parliamentary democracy. No wonder then if election to the office of the President generates some high political drama and public pretension. ......Full text

Yet Again: Raje Government in Rajasthan Answers Protests With Bullets

Police bullets are the Raje Government's first response to any mass mobilisation and protest in Rajasthan. The police firing on Gujjar protestors which claimed a toll of 16 people is the latest in the long record of police terror that the Raje Government has unleashed in Rajasthan in its three-year tenure......Full text

Atrocities Against UP Dalits in the Wake of Mayawati’s Victory: Disturbing Trends

While Mayawati is being hailed for her party’s unique metamorphosis from Bahujan to ‘Sarvajan’, Mayawati’s victory has no doubt sharpened the aspirations of dalits in UP for democracy and empowerment. However, the few weeks that have followed Mayawati’s ascension to power have witnessed a disturbing trend: a spate of assaults and atrocities against dalits......Full text

Nandigram and the Response of CPI(M) Intellectuals

For intellectuals loyal to the CPI(M), Nandigram has been a serious source of discomfort. This is for more than one reason. One the one hand, the sheer fact of a massacre of rural poor has been too much to rationalize while being consistent with Left sensitivity...Full text

Mining Policy – protecting environment and people or investment?

A New Mineral Policy is in the offing. If it is guided by the recommendations of the Anwarul Hoda Committee on the National Mineral Policy, it will pave the way for large-scale FDI in the mining sector, and increase the social and ecological devastation caused by mining...Full text

JNNURM: The Neo-Liberal Mission for Indian Cities

Urban India is today going through a process of rapid transformation in terms of monumental changes occurring in investments patterns, spatial configurations, employment structure, and class relations. These changes are a direct consequence of ‘third generation reforms’ initiated in cities in the late 90s. Cities, especially the metros ones, are today increasingly sought to be modelled on the image of global cities such as New York, London or Tokyo...Full text

No More Street Food in Delhi!

The recent Supreme Court order banning cooked street food in the capital is like punishing the victim instead of the perpetrator. The order put a seal of approval on the scheme proposed by the MCD and the NDMC to ban cooked street food in order to regulate hawking and vending in Delhi with a view to beautify the city for the Commonwealth Games 2010....Full text

A Fraud on the Unorganised Workers!

The Unorganised Sector Workers’ Social Security Bill, 2007 is expected to be tabled in the monsoon session of the Parliament that is due to begin on 01 July 2007. This is the most diluted version of the original draft prepared by the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector (NCEUS) that was established in September 2004 for the purpose of focusing on this sector...Full text

Blood stains on the hands of Buddhadev Bhattacharya

Comrades Amalendu Bhusan Choudhury, Dibakar Bhattacharjya, Dr.Debashis Mukharjee, Dr.Shanta Sabuj Das, Dr. Samir DasGupta, Dr. Kamal Saha, Dr. Partha Hazari and Chaitali Sen went to Nandigram several times in the past few months to carry on political propaganda among the masses and mobilise them to the 25  May Shaheed Minar Rally. Here is a summary of what they saw and heard there. The narrator was a member of the CPI(ML) team that visited Nandigram on 4 January this year and was arrested and detained by the police on false charges for two weeks......Full text

Massive Rally at Shahid Minar Maidan in Kolkata to Mark the 40th Anniversary of Naxalbari Movement

More than twenty five thousand people from different parts of the country observed the 40th anniversary of the Naxalbari movement with a Rally at Shahid Minar Maidan in Kolkata on 25 May 2007.....Full text

Peasants Protest Land Grab in Bihar

Nitish Kumar says he won’t allow any SEZ in Bihar, but his government is acquiring lands on a large scale for projects of various corporate houses. Lands are also being acquired for private hospitals and private educational institutions. People are also facing forcible displacement in the name of many development schemes with the government turning a blind eye towards the rehabilitation and livelihood of the affected people. The process of land acquisition for nearly 85 industrial, commercial and other establishments is going on in Bihar while people are opposing these moves at many places through spontaneous as well as organized protests......Full text

Party district conferences in Rajasthan

The first district conference of CPI(ML) was held in Udaipur on June 10. Two hundred elected delegates from 6 tehsils participated in it......Full text

CPI(ML) in Bihar Municipality Polls

In the municipality polls in Bihar this time around, the party registered a considerably improved performance. The party won 5 Municipality seats – 1 each in Bhabhua, Dumraon, and Aurangabad and 2 in Khagaul. The party also won a total of 15 Nagar Panchayat seats (2 each at Mairwan, Warsaliganj, Nasiriganj, Bikramganj......Full text

Seminars on Sachar Committee Findings

Recently, several Seminars and Conventions have been organised to discuss the implications of the Sachar Committee findings – at Gwalior, Darbhanga, Samastipur, Aurangabad and Ramgarh in Hazaribagh. In Gwalior, the Indian Association of Lawyers organised a seminar on 27 May on the implications of Sachar Committee findings regarding the condition of minorities in India.......Full text

AIPWA Holds State-level Women’s Conference at Patna Against Women’s Oppression, for Women’s Employment

AIPWA held a Women’s Conference against Oppression and For Employment at Vidyapati Bhavan, Patna, in which over 1000 women from 22 districts of Bihar took part. Apart from AIPWA activists, health workers belonging to ASHA and Anganbadi workers also took part ......Full text

Chandrashekhar’s mother refutes malicious news report

A full decade ago, Chandrashekhar was shot dead on the streets of Siwan by goons of RJD MP Shahabuddin. Ever since, his mother Kaushalya Devi has been at the forefront of the struggle for justice, relentlessly campaigning against Shahabuddin, participating in every campaign of the CPI(ML), inspiring students and youth with Chandrashekhar’s example, and even challenging Shahabuddin’s reign of terror by contesting polls from the CPI(ML) in his stronghold, Siwan town itself ......Full text