2020

Date: September 21, 2020
The Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has issued the following statement:
Condemn Assault on Indian Parliament
Join Countrywide Protest Against Farm Bills on September 25
The Polit Bureau of the CPI(M) strongly condemns the manner in which this BJP government is bulldozing legislations through the parliament violating all parliamentary procedures and denying MPs the right to discuss and seriously consider legislations that are being (…)

On 20th September 2020 the Deputy Chairman of the Rajya Sabha Shri Harivansh did not pay heed to the demand of opposition Members of the House for division and voting on Farm Bills- Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Bill, 2020 and the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement of Price Assurance and Farm Services Bill, 2020- to determine if those Bills had majority support for its lawful passage in the House. Instead he declared that those Bills were passed (…)

by Chittarvu Raghu
A central legislation ‘Essential Commodities Act, 1955’ was enacted with a main objective to prohibit hoarding and black marketing of essential commodities which may obstruct the supply and have an adverse effect on the normal life of the people. The other objective was to provide the essential commodities to its consumers at fair prices. The prices of essential commodities are dependent on various diversified uncontrolled factors viz. climatic conditions, region, (…)

by Vijay Kumar
The unseemly haste through which the three Firm Bills and same numbers of labour bills were passed has fateful implications for parliamentary democracy and federalism. The rushing through of the three Farm Bills despite almost all the opposition parties, many of them are ruling in numerous States, pressed for in-depth discussion and three labor bills in absence of members belonging to opposition parties will go down as lowest point in Parliamentary democracy. The (…)

by Dr Sher Singh Sangwan
The three Agriculture marketing reform bills introduced in Parliament on 14 September 2020 are strongly protested inside and outside parliament. Despite that Lok Sabha has already passed these bills including the two controversial bills viz., the Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) and Farmer (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services, on 18 September 2020. These two bills are apprehended against the (…)

by Pankaj Butalia
September 20, 2020
Delhi Police’s framing and subsequent reframing of charges, using UAPA (Unlawful Activities Prevention Act), against the young women of Pinjra Tod a few months ago is an example of the gross misuse of special laws enacted by the state for circumstances which lie outside the purview of ordinary laws. By definition such laws are meant to be temporary and exceptions but end up being permanent and the norm.
Over the years we have accumulated a plethora (…)

In recent weeks the COVID vaccine has become the most widely discussed medical issue at world level and this trend is likely to continue. We have daily updates on various vaccines being developed by various western multinational companies, by Russia, China and other countries including India, and on the huge efforts being made by the USA to ensure extra quick development of millions of vaccines. We have reports on big manufacturers producing large number of vaccines even before approval has (…)

by Ben Saul
11 September 2020
An Afghan soldier convicted of murdering three Australian soldiers is among six high-value prisoners who have been flown to Qatar ahead of peace talks between the Taliban and Afghan government this weekend.
Hekmatullah has spent seven years in jail after killing the three soldiers he worked with in 2012 — Lance Corporal Stjepan Milosevic, Sapper James Martin and Private Robert Poate. He is one of the last remaining Taliban prisoners.
Both the Taliban and (…)

by Vandana Shiva
In March 2015, Bill Gates showed an image of the coronavirus during a TED Talk and told the audience that it was what the greatest catastrophe of our time would look like. The real threat to life, he said, is ‘not missiles, but microbes.’ When the coronavirus pandemic swept over the earth like a tsunami five years later, he revived the war language, describing the pandemic as ‘a world war’.
‘The coronavirus pandemic pits all of humanity against the virus,’ he said.
In (…)

BOOK REVIEW
by Archishman Raju
Isabel Wilkerson’s book Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents has received considerable advertisement from the American media. Advertised on a six-storied double sided bill-board in the middle of Manhattan, called an “instant American classic and almost certainly the keynote nonfiction book of the American century thus far” in a New York Times Review the book has received explicit endorsement from the ruling class in the United States of America. (…)