Contents

The Message of Feb 20-21General strike :

Heed the People’s Voice or Quit Office

Even as the Parliament in India began its annual budget session, millions of Indians went on strike across the country calling for urgent policy changes....Full text

The Politics of the Execution of Afzal Guru

When in his recent address at the Jaipur ‘Chintan Shivir’ of the Congress Union Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde said that he had got investigation reports that the RSS and the BJP were promoting ‘Hindu terrorism’ through their training camps and a slanging match ensued between the Congress and the RSS-BJP on the issue, little could one suspect that the Congress was actually getting ready to give in to one of the BJP’s most strident demands – the clamour for hanging Afzal Guru convicted in the 13/12 Parliament House attack case....Full text

Corruption, Caste, and
A Dubious Brand of Social Science

Pranay Krishna

It may be perfectly correct to argue against Ashis Nandy’s legal prosecution. It may be perfectly correct to argue that Ashis Nandy’s remarks in Jaipur Literature festival must be seen in context and no hurried conclusions be drawn about his intentions. ...Full text

International Women’s Day

Long Live Women’s Struggle for
Justice and Freedom!

8 March – International Women’s Day - marks the historic day when, more than a century ago, women workers on the streets of the USA struck work to demand an 8-hour working day and the right to vote. This commemoration of over a 100 years of women’s struggles for equality and liberation takes on a special edge this year in India; it will be observed in the wake of a remarkable countrywide people’s upsurge against sexual violence.            

Reclaiming the Republic

On Republic Day this year, thousands marched in Delhi in a ‘Freedom Parade’ to assert women’s freedom and people’s freedom. The Freedom Parade, taking place not long after the Republic Day parade ended, was held under the banner of the ‘Freedom Without Fear’ campaign, launched to take forward the ongoing movement against sexual violence. Around 2000 protestors, including students and teachers from Delhi University, JNU, Jamia Millia Islamia, women’s groups and citizens from different parts of the city, marched in the procession from Mandi House to Jantar Mantar to ‘Reclaim the Republic’. ...Full text

Resisting the Patriarchal ‘Lines of Control’

Kavita Krishnan

(A version of this article appeared in the February issue of Hard News.) 

Whoever expects a ‘pure’ social revolution will never live to see it.” – V I Lenin
‘Middle class selective outrage’; ‘lynch mob mentality’; ‘macho protectiveness’; ‘coexistence of placards demanding women’s autonomy with those demanding castration for rapists’ – these are the ways in which some sceptics have described the ongoing movement against sexual violence. Activists of women’s movements and students’ movement who have chosen to identify with this movement have been accused of romanticising what is actually a dangerous mob phenomenon. ...Full text

DRAFT RESOLUTION FOR THE 9th PARTY CONGRESS
On Agrarian and other Rural Struggles

1. The agrarian crisis continues to spread and deepen. Instead of addressing any of the structural dimensions of the crisis, whether by way of increasing public investment in agriculture or making better infrastructural facilities available to the agricultural population or carrying out progressive reforms in land and other agrarian relations that could improve the lot of actual producers, the central and state governments continue to push the neo-liberal policy package in the agrarian arena, resulting in further aggravation of the crisis of Indian agriculture and the plight of the real producers including rural labourers. Token government measures like occasional loan-waivers announced usually as a vote-catching tactic during elections have failed to provide any relief to the debt-ridden peasantry and the shame of peasant suicides continues unabated. ...Full text

Draft Resolution on the
International Situation

1.        Global capitalism remains trapped in a protracted recession which has been widely acknowledged as the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Even though the Obama administration now talks of a growing recovery and ‘the beginning of the end of the crisis’ five years on since the spectacular collapse of several gigantic financial firms in the US, the crisis shows no sign of abating. The epicentre of the crisis has been the US economy, still the biggest in the world, but in the era of global capitalist integration the crisis today is being felt across the world. In sectoral terms, finance was where the crisis erupted with great intensity, but since contemporary capitalism is predominantly financial capitalism, the crisis has affected every major aspect of the global economy. What began as a financial crisis has grown into a protracted and comprehensive economic crisis. ...Full text

Special Report

First-ever Two-Day Nationwide General Strike

The strike called by 11 central trade unions including AICCTU against the pro-corporate and anti workers’ policies was unprecedented throughout the country affecting all vital sectors bringing the life to a standstill. The banking system collapsed. The transport sector has responded magnificently in most of the States. The strike was observed in oil, telecom, mining- coal & non-coal, defence, power, port & dock, insurance, State Government employees. Post offices were on strike; income tax offices have largely been hit by the strike. Industrial workers all over the country have shut down the production....Full text

Cover

Massive Protest Against Modi’s Visit to DU

Hundreds of students and teachers of Delhi University and other campuses in Delhi held a spirited protest on 6th February against Narendra Modi’s visit to Sri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC) in Delhi University. All India Students’ Association (AISA) along with other student groups joined the protest. Students and teachers expressed shock and anger at the politically motivated use of academic space to whitewash the image of the mastermind of Gujarat carnage for his future political ambitions....Full text