2021

The Rafale controversy has its origin in the decision to purchase 126 multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA) by the Indian Air Force (IAF), as announced by the Ministry of Defence on the 28th of August, 2007, through a Request for Proposal (RFP) for the procurement of 126 MMRCA (medium multi-role combat aircraft) fighters.
It was only after 5 years, on the 31st January 2012, that the Ministry of Defence of the then UPA Government announced that Dassault Rafale had won the MMRCA competition to (…)

by Arnab Sen Sarma *
The Central Committee (CC), the apex decision-making body of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), has recently released its review report of the 2021 assembly elections in Kerala, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, and Assam . The twenty-six-page document, which presents the party’s intramural analysis of its recent electoral performance in these States, is the reverberation of the CC’s deliberations between August 06-08, 2021. Among all these States, the (…)

by P. S. Jayaramu
(November 8, 2021)
The National Executive Council meeting of the Bharathiya Janata Party ( BJP) took place in New Delhi for the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic broke out. The meeting which was presided by the Party President J. P. Nadda was attended by the senior leaders and past Presidents like Rajnath Singh, Nitin Gatkari and others. Citing past President Amit Shashi, Nadda said the best is yet to come for the Party and set targets ahead of the upcoming (…)

MUSINGS
10 November 2021
Can the Samajwadis be so utterly naïve to label their recently launched perfume, Samajwadi Perfume, potent enough to wipe away the communal hatred spreading around by the combined forces of the Right-Wing!
No doubt, a refreshing idea to launch a perfume in these dark times, but can all the might of all the perfumes of Kannauj contain the cries of communal hatred and the aftermath unleashed from the various quarters of the State?
Let us not sit amidst (…)

The award-winning film ‘Lagaan’ is an inspirational saga of a hurriedly assembled cricket team of village rustics which by dint of sheer grit and determination manages to defeat a colonial team composed of players who had been playing cricket all their life. The present Indian cricket team, based on some of its recent performances, provides an opposite example of underutilizing a richness of cricketing talent to a glaring extent. More money is available now than ever before for promoting (…)

PRESS STATEMENT
November 7th, 2021
The Editors Guild of India is deeply shocked by the Tripura Police’s action of booking 102 people, including journalists, under the coercive Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, for reporting and writing on the recent communal violence in the state. The state police has sent notices to various social media platforms under UAPA. This moves comes a few days after the police had filed UAPA charges against some Delhi based lawyers who had visited Tripura (…)

National Convention Of Workers 11th November 2021, Jantar Mantar, New Delhi
DECLARATION
The National Convention of Workers being held on 11th November 2021 at Jantar Mantar, New Delhi at the initiative of Joint Platform of Central Trade Unions and Independent sectoral All India Federations and Associations calls upon the working people to heighten the ongoing united struggles to the level of resistance against the desperate pursuit of anti-worker, anti-farmer, anti–people, pro-corporate (…)

Reviewed by Lowell Gustafson *
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Moral Majorities across the Americas: Brazil, the United States, and the Creation of the Religious Right by Benjamin A. Cowan Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press 2021. 304 pp. (cloth), ISBN 978-1-4696-6206-0 (paper), ISBN 978-1-4696-6207-7; (e-book), ISBN 978-1-4696-6208-4.
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Benjamin A. Cowan seeks to correct what he sees as “academic neglect of studying and historicizing right-wing actors and movements,” such as those of the (…)

by Christopher Wong
The workers’ struggle at Tiananmen Square and the transition from one world into the next The meaning of Tiananmen Democracy in the factory The instinct of the workers’ movement The road to Tiananmen The death of the workers’ movement
Thirty-two years later, the basic details of the events that transpired at Tiananmen Square between April 15, 1989 and June 4, 1989 are agreed upon by all but the most intractable propagandists. Angered at what they viewed as delays in (…)

* Japan’s imperial system faces existential crisis | Rajaram Panda
* The Pathology of Standardized ‘Objective” Tests | Avijit Pathak
* Tribute to Barun Das Gupta | Sankar Ray
* Climate threat over South Asia | Jawed Naqvi