In the first two weeks of September, Bengaluru experienced torrential rains that left several thousand working-class families in the lurch due to submergence of their houses. While television channels was filled with news of how CEO’s were taken out of their homes in boats, and the manner in which water had stagnated in IT parks.

In January 2022, various environmental, human rights and socio-political activists of West Bengal came together to form a platform called ‘Poribesh Odhikar Andolon’. The immediate context of forming the platform is the need to forge larger solidarity with the people’s movement against proposed Deocha Pachami coal mining project posing serious threats to the environment, lives and livelihoods of the people of Birbhum.

The startling recovery of more than fifty crore rupees in cash and gold from two flats belonging to an actress and reportedly a close aide to the now dropped TMC minister Partha Chatterjee has once again put the Mamata Banerjee government of West Bengal in the dock. The recovery of the cash and the arrest of the minister have happened in the wake of the Calcutta High Court judgement ordering a CBI probe into the massive irregularities and brazen manipulation in the School Service Commission recruitment process in West Bengal.

Fifty years have elapsed since the death of Comrade Charu Mazumdar in Kolkata's Lalbazar police lock-up. Back then, the Indian state must have heaved a huge sigh of relief, expecting his death to mark the end of the revolutionary wave that had spread across India in the wake of Naxalbari. But five decades later, when the Modi regime seeks to suppress every voice of dissent, it has to concoct the term 'urban naxal' to persecute dissent.

A Shift in the Balance of Power

In his book The Discovery of India, written while he was in prison during the Quit India movement, Jawaharlal Nehru commented:

July 9, 2022 will go down in Sri Lankan history as the day when the lethal combination of an acute economic crisis and a massive eruption of popular anger forced a tyrant to flee. Photos and videos of the occupation of the President’s Palace by thousands of common people, with the crowd taking control of all the facilities of the palace from the swimming pool to the kitchen, bed rooms to music hall, have gone viral globally as the latest visual of people power.

The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC) has notified the new Forest (Conservation) Rules, 2022 (FCR, 2022) under the Forest (Conservation) Act on 28 June replacing earlier Forest (Conservation) Rules notified in 2003 and its amendments in 2004, 2014 and 2017. The approval for de-reservation of forest land, use of forest land for non-forest purposes or for assignment of lease, is to be accorded by the Central Government in two stages, namely ‘In- Principle’ approval and ‘Final’ approval.

The Sangh brigade is planning a repeat of the Babri Masjid demolition by raking up a dispute over the Gyanvapi mosque. This is a clear violation of the Places of Worship Act, 1991 which protects the status of every place of religious worship as on 15 August, 1947.

“The first division of labour is that between man and woman for the propagation of children”, wrote Marx and Engels in an unpublished manuscript. Indeed, the bearing of a child imposes a heavy burden on a woman, even when the pregnancy may not have been a matter of choice for her. In this view, the recognition of her agency to choose to terminate the pregnancy is a matter of utmost importance in the upliftment of women and the realization of gender equality.

CPI(ML) Liberation condemns the bulldozing of the Karnataka Protection Of Right to Freedom of Religion Ordinance, 2022 by the BJP government in Karnataka. This law is brought in with a clear intent to criminalize and terrorize non-Hindu communities, particularly the Christian community.