Contents

Boldly Confront Corporate-Backed Corruption and Clamour for Modi

Even as the Congress tries hard to hit an emotional pitch over its food-for-vote campaign, the spectre of corruption keeps coming back to haunt it hard, challenging its survival in power and threatening to reduce it to its lowest ever tally in the coming Lok Sabha elections. The CBI, the caged parrot of the powers that be as the Supreme Court famously described it, has now named a top industrialist and a retired bureaucrat in a fresh FIR on coal-block allocations. While the naming of Kumar Mangalam Birla, chairman of AV Birla group and former Coal Secretary PC Parakh has raised eyebrows in some circles, what the nation really wants to know is why the third side of the triangle has been left out. ...Full text

The Fodder Scam Verdict : Lessons and Challenges

The conviction of Lalu Prasad Yadav, Jagannath Mishra and Jagdish Sharma in the Rs 950-crore fodder scam by a special CBI court in Ranchi is now likely to result in the first case of disqualification in the wake of the Supreme Court’s July 10 verdict that calls for automatic and immediate post-conviction disqualification of any member of state legislature or Parliament. ...Full text

Ahead of the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, Manmohan Singh had clinched the Indo-US nuclear deal with George Bush in 2008. Five years later, as India awaits the general elections of 2014, Singh was back in America to open up India’s national exchequer to American companies in mega defence and nuclear purchase agreements. The joint statement issued after the third Obama-Manmohan meeting (ignoring the occasions when the two have met on the sidelines of multilateral summits) talks of enhanced defence, economic and of course foreign policy cooperation between the two countries. ...Full text

Banking Reforms:Alarm Bell of Denationalisation and Foreign Takeover

RBI Govenor Raghuram Rajan’s recent proposals made before the American financial establishment and press in Washington portend an ominous future for the Indian banking sector. Together with the Banking Laws (Amendment) Bill 2011 passed by Parliament during the 2012 Winter Session, his open invitation to foreign banks to take over Indian banks and the assurance to mete out near-national treatment to such foreign banks clear the decks for a veritable denationalization of the Indian banking Industry, where the scene is still dominated by public sector Indian banks with an industry share of 80% with private Indian and foreign banks accounting for the rest, 15 percent and 5 percent respectively. ...Full text 

Recommendations by the Report of Raghuram Rajan Committee: A Critical Assessment

The Raghuram Rajan Committe Report (2013) proposes a general method of allocation of funds based on two criteria firstly ‘developmental needs’ of states measured by performance in certain socio-economic indicators (combined in a composite index of under-development) and secondly, improvement of states in the same index over time. Since the very publication of the report its recommendations have been questioned by critics, including a serious note of dissent by one of the members in the committee, Dr. Shaibal Gupta. Further criticisms have come from particular sections of media. ...Full text

Modi “Should Feel Ashamed Of Himself In Bhagat Singh’s Company”

What is laughable about Modi releasing Bhagat Singh’s Jail Notebook is that the Notebook itself is testimony to Bhagat Singh’s Marxist ideology and temperament, including detailed quotes from Marx on religion, Lenin, Trotsky and other communist revolutionaries who are anathema for Modi and his RSS. ...Full text

General Giap and the Myth of American Invincibility

(Excerpted from article by James A. Warren, Daily Beast, October 12, 2013)

Just before the American ground war in Vietnam began in March 1965 with the landing of a brigade of US Marines at Danang, General Vo Nguyen Giap, who had been commander in chief of Communist armed forces in Vietnam since 1944, told a television interviewer that “Things are going badly for the enemy, because the South Vietnamese soldiers do not want to fight for the Americans. But we are in no hurry. The longer we wait, the greater will be the Americans’ defeat.”...Full text

A Massacre of Justice

What happened to the blood spilt at Laxmanpur Bathe on the night of December 1st 1997? The blood of 58 people, butchered in their sleep? The blood of the poorest of the poor, the oppressed – who paid with that blood for daring to dream of equality, emancipation, and dignity? Will the blood of Bathe remain ‘orphan blood’ – or will we embrace it, adopt it, join its cries for justice?...Full text

Justice Not Vengeance:The Bathani Tola Massacre and the Ranbeer Sena in Bihar

(Excerpts from the special article by Bela Bhatia in EPW, September 21, 2013 Vol XlVIII No. 38, Economic & Political Weekly)

...Wails and cries now rented the air, heavy with the acrid smell from the burnt houses. In the evening light, bodies lay strewn on the wet earth, which bore marks of hundreds of desperate footprints. Even as the men tried to brace themselves for the next task ahead, taking the wounded to the nearest hospital, the policemen from the police camp located just across a field in the middle school of Barki Kharaon finally made an appearance. When they asked the men of the tola to carry the bodies of the dead to the roadside, they met with stiff resistance. ...Full text

Combating Communalism and Islamophobia

On September 30th, Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde wrote to all Chief Ministers asking them to ensure that “no innocent Muslims is detained in terror cases.” This recognition of an enormous issue of human rights violations is itself a vindication and victory for the many ongoing struggles against Islamophobic witch-hunt. Representatives of some of those struggles participated in a national convention hosted by the CPI(ML) in Delhi on September 25th. 

But Shinde’s letter also smacks of hypocrisy and doublespeak....Full text

Shahid (Azmi): Beyond the Film

I am pained, the heart bleeds, when I hear what they have endured. But in spite of all that, it will never be easy for me to see an innocent being sent behind bars or to the gallows only because the crime alleged was a bomb blast. -Shahid Azmi (1977-2010)

The much awaited feature film, Shahid, directed by Hansal Mehta was released for public on Friday, 18th October. It is a biographical Hindi film based on the life and works of Mumbai based slain civil and democratic rights’ lawyer, Shahid Azmi. ...Full text

The US Government Shutdown and Debt Ceiling Row

- Arindam Sen

Far from being a passing shadow, the curious developments in America was symptomatic of a defining paradox of the political economy of that country and at the same time reflective of the continuing crisis of the international capitalist order. But a brief chronicle of the main events will be in order before we come to their deeper implications.

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Withdraw the UPA Ordinance to Protect Criminals

On the “Right to Reject”

 ‘Save UP-Save Democracy’ Rally in Lucknow

All India Kisan Mahasabha Holds Dharna at Parliament Street

March to Rajbhawan in Karbi Anglong 

Cyclone Phaillin: Devastated People Await Relief  

CPI(ML) Leader Jagat Martoliya Arrested to Prevent Calamity-Affected from Meeting Uttarakhand

AIPWA Leader Addresses Talks in the US and UK

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OBITUARY

GP Deshpande

Dr. Vinod Raina

MP Sinha

Madhav Nath

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