2016

EDITORIAL
The fifth phase of the West Bengal State Assembly elections is taking place day after tomorrow, that is, on Saturday, April 30, and the campaign for that phase of polling has come to an end this evening. The most significant event in the last few days in the Bengal polls has been a joint public meeting in Kolkata’s Park Circus Maidan yesterday addressed, inter alia, by Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi and former West Bengal CM and CPM leader Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee. This is (…)

by Hasan Hamidullah
Moscow is seeking to decrease the dependence of its oil and gas industry on the West and for that purpose Russian energy companies are in search of new reliable partners and investors. The principal objective of the visit of the head of Russia’s major national oil giant, Rosneft, to India has been to tie up the OVL, Oil India Limited, Indian Oil Corporation and Bharat Petroleum in drilling operations in the zone of the Russian Arctic.
Western sanctions against Russia (…)

May 1 is the International Workers’ Day. The following two articles are being published on that occasion.
Climate Change and Workers
by Bharat Dogra
It is now well known that life in the near future can be acutely and adversely affected by climate change. Despite this, very few efforts have been made to have an understanding of the impact of climate change on various sections of vulnerable workers. Here an attempt is being made to form a preliminary understanding of the impact of (…)

DOCUMENT
The Team:
1. Prakash Dubey, General Secretary
2. Seema Chishti, Executive Committee Member
3. Vinod Verma, Executive Committee Member
Places of Travel:
Jagdalpur, Bastar and Raipur.
Dates of Travel:
March 13 to 15, 2016.
Terms of reference:
To verify and assess:
• Recent reports of the arrests of journalists in Chhattisgarh;
• The threats and challenges faced by journalists in the State;
• The challenges to the profession of journalism.
Summary
The (…)

From N.C.’s Writings
Now that elections to the West Bengal State Assembly are in full swing, it is a ‘moment of truth’ for the present ruling party there, the Trinamul Congress, led by CM Mamata Banerji. It is thus instructive to ponder over what N.C. had written about the erstwhile ruling party in the State, the CPI-M, headed by the late CM, Jyoti Basu, and its functioning more those 25 years ago. Incidentally, the same CPI-M now has an electoral understanding with the Congress, (…)

West Bengal is witnessing Assembly elections in a novel perspective. The CPI-M-Congress alliance is the main contender of the TMC in the present elections. Rather than making a critique of their past deeds, the CPI-M has left no stone unturned in forging an alliance with the Congress for electoral gains. Other than ousting the Mamata Banerjee-led government, the CPI-M has not offered any substantial argument in support of the alliance. The most blatant thing they did was to give the (…)

“[W]hen we abolish the slavery of half of humanity, together with the whole system of hypocrisy that it implies, then the ‘division’ of humanity will reveal its genuine significance and the human couple will find its true form.” — Simone de Beauvoir1
The age of consent in rape cases in India was raised from 16 years to 18 years through the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 2013. It led to many eyebrows being raised and not surpri-singly so since the global average of the age of consent still (…)

A party which expects everyone to wear nationalism on one’s sleeves made the most anti-national statement. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) said that the Kohinoor diamond was “offered” by Dalip Singh, Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s son, to Lord Dalhousie and it belongs to Britain.
The angry comments following the statement made the party realise its mistake and it changed its stand abruptly. It said that the Kohinoor belonged to India and would be brought back through talks with the British. (…)

by P.C. Jain
It has been a special characteristic of the BJP that it has been surviving and seeking power through the catch phrases or slogans on which they become fetish and aggressive from time to time. At one time it was protection of cow (Gau-mata), at a later stage it was Ram Mandir at Ayodhya. Now it is Bharat Mata ki Jai. Nationalism and patriotism of their concept are being thrust upon the people and those who do not agree with their interpretation are dubbed as anti-national and (…)

by Vivek Kumar Srivastava
Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (April 14, 1891-December 6, 1956) was not a socialist in the typical term though he had an inclination towards evolutionary socialism; he developed his own ideas and emerged a socialist in his own way. He dissected the economic inequality and exploitation in an empirical manner. His socialism is innovative and indigenous as he analyses the exploitation of the people within the country with a social world approach. It is pragmatic, not (…)