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Editorial |
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Combat Corruption, Resist Repression!
Save Democracy, Save India!
On 26 June 1975 the then Congress government imposed the infamous Emergency, suspending all civil liberties, muzzling voices of dissent, jailing opponents and attempting to throttle democracy. This June, 36 years since that black day, we can experience all the symptoms of an undeclared Emergency...Full text
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Document |
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The Debacle of the Left Front in West Bengal andChallenges before the Indian Left
Statement issued by the All India Left Coordination after its meeting in Delhi on 28-29 May 2011
The severe defeat of the CPI(M)-led Left Front in the recent Assembly elections of West Bengal holds major lessons for the Left movement in India. It not only raises several important questions, but more importantly it brings to the fore new challenges and urgent tasks for all sincere forces of the Left....Full text
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Policy Watch |
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Making a Mockery of ‘Poverty’
Kavita Krishnan
The latest NAC draft of the UPA Government’s much-touted Food Security Act follows the Planning Commission’s definition of the ‘poor’ as anyone consuming Rs 20 per day in urban areas and Rs 15 per day in rural areas. In an affidavit in the Supreme Court, the Planning Commission has defended this criterion, inviting widespread outrage. How can pitiful sums like Rs 15 or Rs 20, in this day and age, be stretched to meet even the minimum nutritional requirements of a human being – let alone other essential costs like transport, medicine, rent, education and so on?...Full text
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Cover Feature |
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Intensify the Struggle Against Corruption and Corporate Plunder
Resist the UPA Government’s Undeclared Emergency
The UPA Government, as part of its ‘Green Hunt’ policy, has long been in the habit of branding people’s movements and activists challenging corporate plunder and state repression as ‘left wing extremists’. Binayak Sens all over the country were branded as ‘seditious’ and jailed. Now, the same Government is levelling the charge of ‘fascism’ on the anti-corruption movement as a pretext for unleashing repression and muzzling protest....Full text
The Anti-Corruption Movement Needs A Stronger Democratic Thrust
Dipankar Bhattacharya
A modified version of this article appeared in the Deccan Chronicle, June 12 2011, under a different heading.
y all indications, the issue of corruption has once again begun to assume explosive proportions in Indian politics. Given the unprecedented scale of scams and the wide range of institutions that have been exposed to be affected by the rot, the public outrage should not cause any surprise....Full text
Latest Scam Update
Privatisation Spawns Corruption
After the scams in mining and spectrum, now we have the fresh revelations of a huge scam in oil-and-gas and evidence of massive corruption in the PPP model of constructing Delhi’s new Airport. The POSCO project is increasingly being exposed, not just as an unconscionable act of environmental destruction and forced eviction of the poor, but as yet another instance of corruption and corporate plunder of minerals. Almost every fresh instance of corruption that is being exposed strengthens our contention that the hallmarks of neoliberal policies – privatisation of natural resources and monopoly services, and the crony capitalist nexus between government and big corporations - are the biggest source of corruption today. Any struggle that genuinely seeks to rid our economy and polity of corruption will have to challenge these policies that spawn corruption on an unprecedented scale....Full text
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Article |
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Legacy of Rabindranath :
Discard the Dead, Uphold the Living
Arindam Sen
(Continued from Liberation May 2011)
II
“While all others are engaged all the time in a hundred worldly avocations,
You like a truant boy freed from restraints...
Played your flute the livelong day. O ye rise up
Lo, fire has broken out somewhere!
Whose conch is blowing to rouse the world!
Wherefrom the world is filled with sobbing?
Where in the dark dungeon tightly tethered
The helpless is crying for help?”...Full text
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Working Class |
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Maruti Workers’ Strike
he 13-day strike of workers at the Maruti Suzuki factory at Manesar (Gurgaon) finally concluded with a significant victory of the workers this June. The management was forced to reinstate the 11 workers who had been sacked for agitating for the right to form a union of their choice....Full text
Working Class Is Awakening the World Over
Rajiv Dimri interviewed George Mavrikos, General Secretary of the World Federation of Trade Unions – WFTU, at the ILC.
Greece is witnessing a major upsurge at the present time. Can you tell us more about these movements of the Greek working class?
The Greek bourgeoisie, the social democrat government, and its allies the conservative party in cooperation with the EU, the IMF and the World Bank have unleashed an assault on the Greek working class on the pretext of the global capitalist crisis....Full text
International Labour Conference
This is a brief report by Rajiv Dimri on the recently concluded 100th International Labour Conference.
The International Labour Conference of ILO held its 100th session from 1-17 June 2011 at its headquarter, Geneva, Switzerland. All India Central Council of Trade Unions (AICCTU), participated as one of the constituents of the Workers’ Group of the Tripartite Delegation (the other two groups consisted of employers’ and government representatives) of India. This was the first time AICCTU was invited. On behalf of AICCTU, Rajiv Dimri, National Secretary, attended the Conference....Full text
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From the States |
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Mayawati’s UP : Regime of Rape
A 14 year-old dalit-Muslim girl who strays in the vicinity of a police station is raped and killed by police and then hung up on a tree inside the police station. The tree is cut down and evidence destroyed. Post-mortems are falsified: in the first instance to suggest suicide; in the second one, to admit murder, but deny rape. Police, doctors, ruling politicians, the government – all unite to protect the predatory police, and try and bury the crime as deep as the girl’s body is buried.....Full text
Jaya’s Diktats Hit Students Hard
Bhuvana
As soon as Jayalalitha came to power, she has immediately discontinued policies and projects associated with the previous government. She discontinued the new assembly complex – that cost Rs.1200 crore of public money - inaugurated by the Karunanidhi government. The previous government had introduced a ‘uniform syllabus’ for all schools in the state and spent Rs 200 crore on printing 9 crore books for the same. Jayalalitha announced that this uniform syllabus (and the associated textbooks) would be discarded, causing confusion and consternation among students, who were left without textbooks at the beginning of the school term.....Full text
Forbesganj Atrocity Exposes Nitish’s Repressive and Communal Face
The barbaric atrocity at Forbesganj has shocked people all over the country. Poor people (who happened to be of the minority community) were protesting against a public road being blocked off to suit the interests of a rich businessman. In response the police chased them to their homes, entered their homes by force, opened fire, killing four people including a pregnant woman and a child, and injuring several. Worst of all, they displayed vicious brutality, stamping on the dying people.....Full text
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Cover |
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In Solidarity with
Anti-POSCO Movement
As the Odisha Government went ahead with its plan of forced land grab for the POSCO project, women, children, elders, youth and men of the Dhinkia, Govindpur and other villages of Jagatsinghpur district of Odisha state, in an exemplary display of resistance, lay day after day in the scorching sun face to face with nearly 30 police platoons. Protesting women were beaten up when they tried to prevent police platoons from destroying betel vines. Jagatsinghpur was on the brink of being turned into another Kalinganagar. The movement has now gained a small respite with the Odisha Government putting the land acquisition plans on hold for some days.....Full text
Tribute
M F Husain
Dharmendra Sushant
Maqbool Fida Husain is no more. He breathed his last on 9 June 2011, exiled from his homeland, in London.
Dragged into controversy by the Hindutva forces in the latter part of his life, he remained, in uncontroversial terms, modern India’s foremost artist, renowned across the world.....Full text
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