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Editorial |
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Jan Adhikar Rally and After:
Carrying forward the Battle for Land Reforms, Development and Democracy
On March 30, Patna's historic Gandhi Maidan was witness to one of the biggest people’s assemblies of recent times. The occasion was the “Jan Adhikar Rally” called by the Bihar State Committee of the CPI(ML). People from different parts of the state started streaming into Patna from the early hours of March 29 itself. And the flow continued till the early afternoon on March 30 when the meeting was already on. Defying the scorching sun, tens of thousands of people listened in rapt attention to the speeches of the leaders, bursting frequently not just into loud applause but roaring chants: “Check Prices, Guarantee Jobs; Carry out Land Reforms” and “Land, Housing and Guaranteed Jobs – People’s Rights, People’s Rights.”....Full text
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Commentary |
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Bathe Verdict
Massacre Masterminds Escape Justice
Kavita Krishnan
13 years after the brutal massacre of landless poor by the Ranveer Sena at Laxmanpur Bathe in Jehanabad, Bihar, the Additional District and Sessions Court of Patna sentenced 16 Ranveer Sena men to death and 10 to life imprisonment. The verdict, though belated, is welcome – but those who bear greatest guilt for that massacre - Ranveer Sena Brahmeshwar Singh and the political patrons of the Ranveer Sena escaped punishment entirely.....Full text
A Bill to Kill Higher Education
Radhika Menon
The union cabinet has given the green signal to Kapil Sibal to table the Foreign Educational Institution (Regulation of Entry and Operation) Bill, 2010, in the Parliament. Part of Sibal’s much touted 100 day agenda, the Bill proposes to make laws prescribing the approval of branch campuses of foreign educational institutions in India......Full text
Food Security Farce
Dhirendra Jha
India has a shameful track record of tackling hunger: worse even than some of the poorest countries in the world. According to the UN’s Global Hunger Index 2009, which ranked countries on three leading indicators – prevalence of child malnutrition, rates of child mortality, and the proportion of people who are calorie deficient - India ranked 65th out of 88 countries. India lagged behind countries like Uganda (38th); Mauritania (40th); Zimbabwe (58th) and even war-torn nations, as well as India's neighbours Nepal and Pakistan......Full text
Not Cricket :
Put a Stop to IPL's Corrupt Corporate Carnival
"What do they know of cricket who only cricket know?" – that is how Trinidadian Marxist and noted cricket writer C L R James had commented on the deep interweaving of cricket with imperialism and racism. The remark takes on a new significance with the controversy unfolding in the IPL – where corporate profits, corruption, betting, Bollywood and other externals play a far greater role than the sport itself......Full text
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SPECIAL REPORT |
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Country-wide People's Rights Rallies Demand
“Check Prices, Give Us Jobs
– Carry Out Land Reforms!”
(Between 23 and 31 March this year, the CPI(ML) held mass rallies and other mass protests in the national capital and in several states demanding a check on price rise, and guarantee of jobs, housing and land reform. A Report.)
Massive Jan-Adhikar Rally In Patna
On March 30, Patna became a veritable sea of red flags, with thousands of poor agricultural labourers, sharecroppers, peasants, women and men from all over Bihar assembling at Gandhi Maidan in CPI(ML)'s Jan Adhikar Rally. The record-breaking participation and mobilisation of the rural poor, defying the blazing sun, was a challenge to the Nitish Government's claims of 'good governance.' In the face of the ruling class consensus across parties against land reforms, the Rally was an assertion of the uncompromising resolve of the rural poor to struggle for implementation of the recommendations of the Land Reforms Commission and secure sharecroppers' rights......Full text
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ARTICLE |
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Notes on Agrarian Crisis and the
UPA’s Anti-Farmer Offensive
B. Sivaraman
(In the backdrop of severe agrarian crisis and growing peasant assertion, a national Peasant Conference is to be held at Patna on 10 May, the anniversary of the First Indian War of Independence. The article analysis of the ongoing agrarian crisis as a note towards the Conference. – Ed/-)
After deliberately turning a blind eye to the acute agrarian crisis through the first four years of its first term, a crisis that became so acute mainly because of its brazen neo-liberal anti-farmer policies, the UPA, just on the election year before the last Lok Sabha polls, announced the one-time loan waiver. By their own admission, the move paid them rich electoral dividends. But one year into the UPA’s second term, the fury of the agrarian crisis is back with a vengeance. The following features and symptoms are quite prominent: (i) agricultural growth rate is again declining – after registering 4% in the first year of the Eleventh Plan (2007-12), the growth rate dipped to 1.6% in 2008-09 and then minus 0.2 per cent in 2009-10 according to the latest Economic Survey; (ii) a renewed wave of farmers’ suicides is being seen not only in the old suicide belts but also in several other states; (iii) agriculture in many parts of the country is reeling under the disastrous impact of a debilitating drought, and (iv) together with agricultural stagnation, the country is experiencing acute food inflation.....Full text
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CALL |
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AICCTU’s MAY DAY CALL
CHECK PRICE RISE! FOOD FOR ALL! JOBS FOR ALL !
Rights and Dignity to Workers and Toiling Peasants !
Monthly wages of Rs. 11,000 and Social Security to all unorganized workers !
The working class, the toiling masses and the poor are reeling under relentless rise in prices of food and other essential items coupled with massive loss of livelihood, steady erosion in wages and social security, ever-growing impoverishment and pauperization and curbing of trade unions rights including creation of No-TU Zones. But powerful protests can be seen all around and on May Day this year the working class of the country will direct its growing anger and resentment towards giving a fitting reply to the ruling elite’s pro-rich, anti poor policies.....Full text
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UPDATES |
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8th Party Congress of the Revolutionary Workers’ Party of Bangladesh (RWPB)
A three-member delegation of the CPI(ML)(Liberation had been to Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, to attend the 8th Party Congress of the RWPB held on and from 1st April to 3rd April, followed by a grand meet with the leaders of the left and democratic parties/formations of Bangladesh on 4th April evening, including Comrade Saiful Haque, General Secretary, RWPB. The CPI(ML) delegation was led by Politburo member Comrade Swadesh Bhattacharya, and included PB Member Comrade Kartick Pal and Tripura State Secretary and CCM Comrade Mrinmoy Chakravarty. The delegation met with warm welcome, communist fraternity and comradely hospitality. The Party Congress symbolised proletarian simplicity, commitments and bold and tireless struggles towards reorganisation and rebuilding a revolutionary communist party......Full text
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FILM |
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The Hurt Locker :
Cinematic Adventurism Set in American Imperial Adventurism
Tyler Walker Williams
This year's Academy Awards in California, true to its Hollywood roots, presented with an ample amount of scripted suspense and feigned emotion a classic underdog story: 'The Hurt Locker' a low-budget, 'independent' film about the Iraq war, directed by a woman (Katherine Bigelow) and featuring little-known actors, beat out director James Cameron (a man and the ex-husband of Bigelow, no less) and his multi-million dollar epic 'Avatar' (the most expensive, and soon to be highest-grossing, film of all time) for the honor of 'Best Picture'. Bigelow became the first woman to receive an Oscar as a director (a milestone that was way, way overdue), and the film received several other awards and was showered with praise for its 'realistic' portrayal of the rigors of war.....Full text
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Cover |
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Green Hunt's Grim Toll Rises
The Maoist ambush of Central Reserve Police Force )CRPF( jawans on April 6 in Dantewada, Chhattisgarh which claimed the lives of 74 jawans is yet another tragic and terrible toll taken by Chidambaram's war. The CRPF Battalion was reportedly returning from a 4-day 'area domination operation' when they were ambushed, and were heavily armed with sophisticated weapons which were captured by the Maoists......Full text
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