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Vinod Mishra:
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Thirty Years of Naxalbari
 
 

 

December 2005
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Editorial

India Empowered

Commentary

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Investigation

Report

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International
 

 
 
  Editorial
 

Bihar’s Vote for Change

Bihar has voted emphatically for change. The February elections had given rise to a hung Assembly in which the RJD, though dislodged from power, remained the largest party. The huge pro-change wave this time has decisively catapulted the BJP-JD(U) combine into power with a secure majority and pushed the RJD down to the third slot behind the two NDA partners....Full text

  India Empowered

India Empowered

(Reproduced from the Indian Express, October 31, 2005, where it appeared as a contribution to the 'India Empowered' series.)

India empowered must mean, first and foremost, empowering the people of India. Yes, my idea of India always begins with 'we, the people' and my definition of the people always begins with the working people and the oppressed. I think it is important to emphasise this at the outset because the people are often counted last or not counted at all. Large sections of them have been rendered invisible they are probably counted only once in ten years when the nation counts all its survivors. India does justifiably mean many things to many people a multifaceted stream of history, a unique cultural mosaic, an amazing treasure-house of nature, a great nation, a mammoth state, and of late a huge and lucrative market. But a macho Indian state doing a tango with the marauder called global capital, and together riding roughshod over the lives and liberties of millions of dispossessed and dissenting Indians that can never be my vision of an empowered India.....Full text

  Commentary
 

Karbi Anglong Demands Peace

After the horrific violence sponsored by the Congress Government of Assam, the Gogoi Government tried to concoct a tale about the ‘red army’ of CPI(ML) being responsible for the killings. Meanwhile, over 50,000 people rendered homeless by the riots remain in relief camps, awaiting restoration of peace and security. Gogoi’s claims have been rubbished by the investigations of fact-finding teams. A 9-Party team which visited the affected spots in late October,...Full text

Jharkhand: Five Years of BJP’s Betrayal

jharkhand is witnessing an interesting experiment: former CM Babulal Marandi and former leader of the Opposition Stephen Marandi have got together to form Jharkhand Vikas Morcha, ostensibly to further agenda of ‘devleopment’ in the State. At present, Babulal Marandi is the National Vice-President of the BJP, leading party of NDA, the ruling coalition in the State, and Stephen Marandi is the Convenor of the UPA! They have some prescriptions for dealing with the phenomenon of the big steel companies that are descending like vultures on the precious iron ore of Singhbhum.....Full text

Uttaranchal: Five Years of Statehood

On November 9, Uttaranchal completed five years as a State. How has the five-year long journey been for the new State? The new State, from its very birth, bore the marks which foretold betrayal of the aspirations that had fuelled the popular movement for Statehood. The ‘UP State Re-organisation Ordinance – 2000’ tabled in Parliament by the BJP for the creation of Uttaranchal, had already laid the ground for the distortion of the vision of the hill state – and the BJP and Congress Governments that followed took the process forward.....Full text

Black Flags are Not Bullets, Slogans are not Stones

In the JNUSU polls last month, AISA retained the post of President, and polled a close second on all other Central Panel posts. Living up to its commitment of resisting the anti-people policies of the UPA Government, especially on the question of the shameful sellout to US diktats on the Iran issue, AISA played a leading role in waving black flags and raising slogans on the occasion of Manmohan Singh’s visit to the campus......Full text

 
 
    Party School
 
 

Regularise the System of Party Education

The CPI (ML) was born in the process of a creative integration of revolutionary theory and practice, and the setback in the early 1970s affected both. Then right from the rectification movement of 1977-78, we have been taking up programmes of party education at various levels in response to the changes in objective situation, new questions of policy and tactics emerging from our practice, and subjective conditions within the Party organisation. During the 1980s schools were held at all-India level on many topics including classics like Capital and burning questions of strategy and tactics... Full text
  Commemoration
 

You Shall Remain Our Chairman Forever

 ON the occasion of Mao Zedong’s birth centenary, throughout the country a lot of discussions are going on, hosts of articles are being written and many functions are being organised. This new-found interest in Mao generates a lot of hope. Even those who till the other day believed that socialism, born out of the womb of capitalism, can never go back to capitalism but can only grow into developed socialism and thereafter into communism and those who ridiculed Mao’s study On Contradiction, are now acclaiming Mao’s Thought on contradictions. These discussions, these debates are indeed of vital importance.......Full text

  Investigation
 

The Truth About the Mau Riots

This year, bamboo poles for the Durga Puja Pandal at Sadar Chowk extended into the Faiz-e-Aam Building (a madarsa). This violated an agreement of 1947. Some tensions and stone-pelting resulted, but the Administration and both sides sorted out the issue by deciding, through a written agreement, to cut off the extra length of the poles that was intruding into the complex. This agreement was signed by several people, including former BJP MP candidate Bharat Lal Rahi and RSS activist Shyamkaran Rai. ... . . Full text

   

Report
 

AIALA organised a dharna before the East Godavari district Collector at Kakinada on Nov. 9 against the AP Govt.’s proposal to acquire 10,000 acres of land for an ONGC oil refinery project and a SEZ near Kakinada....Full text

Third West Bengal State Conference of AIALA

‘Enact special laws at the state level for agricultural labourers to ensure their welfare’, ‘Include all the agricultural labourers in the BPL List’ and ‘Guarantee their health, education and better living and working conditions’, ‘Implement the Employment Guarantee Act strictly to ensure 100 days of work and extend it to all districts’, Don’t deprive peasants and agricultural labourers from their employment by selling out double or triple cropped fertile lands to capitalists in the name of development’.....Full text

Campaign Against Privatisation of Water in Delhi

The CPI (ML) Delhi unit launched a massive state-wide campaign against the increase in water tariff hike, the blatant sell out of infrastructural resources at an abysmally low price and the shameful persistence of trying to implement the policies of privatization in the Delhi Jal Board.....Full text

   

Culture

 

Sajjad Zaheer Centenary Celeberations at Allahabad

SAJJAD Zaheer, founder General Secretary of Progressive Writer’s Asssociation was born on November 5,1905. His birth centenary has been celebrated this year at various places like Delhi, Bhopal, Lucknow, Allahabad and many parts of Pakistan. Almost all shades of left and progressive intelligentsia formed a joint platform to commemorate the occasion at Allahabad with Prof Ali Ahmad Fatmi of PWA as Convenor and Pranay Krishna of Jan Sanskriti Manch as Co-convenor......Full text

Remembering Amrita Pritam

Noted Punjabi writer and literary personality Amrita Pritam passed away last month. She was born at Gujranwala in 1919 – birthplace of legendary poet Waris Shah and prominent site of the nationalist movement in 1919. Her poetry resonated with the cultural and historical nuances of Punjab. In memory of Amrita Pritam, we carry two poems – one evoking the legacy of the Jallianwala Massacre of 1919, and one on Lenin.......Full text

   

International

 

Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité …and Racism –
France’s suburbs explode

In 1961, in the anti-colonial classic ‘The Wretched of the Earth’ based on his experiences in Algeria, Frantz Fanon described the ‘compartmentalisation’ of French colonial society along lines which were both economic and deeply racialised. Nearly half a century on, he could have been writing of cities in France itself in which the country’s black communities.....Full text

APEC: From Free Trade to Fear Trade

What do free trade, terrorism and bird flu have in common?

Plenty if one goes by the fact these three seemingly disparate issues formed the agenda of the latest summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), held at the pretty beach town of Busan in South Korea.......Full text

UPA Government and the WTO Hong Kong Ministerial

 What are the major issues involved in the forthcoming Hong Kong Ministerial Round of the WTO?

In the impending Hong Kong Ministerial Round of the WTO, the official view has tended to focus on three issues in the main – agriculture, non-agricultural market access (NAMA) and Services. In this view, TRIPS is a closed issue. Even the developing countries have confined themselves to raising the issue of Para 6 of MOTA in the TRIPS at most (which relates to problems of the using compulsory licenses to supply patented medicines to countries that cannot produce them). But such a perspective is inadequate – several other issues including that of TRIPS need to be raised even at this stage.......Full text