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The government and its aided institutions, at both the centre and states, seem to have become the biggest exploiter of new labour laws and practices to recruit employees under short-term contracts against permanent vacancies. In the process, the government and its sponsored employers are saving large amounts in pay, allowances and perks at the cost of helpless job seekers. Retirement or contract-end benefits are paltry. In many cases, they don’t exist. For instance, in West Bengal’s Darjeeling district, some 5,000 casual employees under the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration (GTA) have been working for decades without being regularised as permanent workers despite a government order in 2009. The jobs are listed under the categories of ‘B’, ‘C’ and ‘D’. Their persistent protestations failed to move the GTA or the state government.

India’s foreign minister S Jaishankar has made a scathing attack on the institutions that have recently downgraded India’s democratic status by describing them ‘hypocrites’. It is, but a very poor defense for the country, and much less the democracy and the human rights that have been in peril, accelerating since 2014 after the present ruling establishment came to power. His conception of defending India in the international arena clearly reduced to merely a rustic wisdom. He defended the ‘nationalists’, the term he himself referred to in his attack, as if he believed that defending them is equivalent to defending India, its people, its democracy, and its human rights.

The craze of and craving for individual freedom from the stone-age times has been the main cause of irritations for and defeats of autocracies and dictatorial regimes. The Prime Minister has the strong autocratic temperament though he never insisted on individuals to follow his dictums. Even as the chief minister of Gujarat for 13 years he never cared for differing view points within his circle or outside. He did not seek to correct his image through words to deny the barrage of allegations of his involvement in the communal frenzy in March 2002. He proved by his campaign for encouraging modern education to the Muslim girls that he was neither pro nor anti to any specific religion.

The Brazilian Supreme Court overturning former president Lula de Silva’s convictions inits judgment on March 7 has imparted a new dimension to the political battle in this most populated Latin American nation which has been ruled by the far right President Jair Bolsonaro since 2018 when he was elected taking advantage of Lula being in prison and not allowed to contest.

As we mark the tenth anniversary this week of the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan where an earthquake and a tsunami led to a meltdown of nuclear reactors, the emission of huge amounts of radiation and a continuing humanitarian disaster, the fact remains that only in a world with the political drive to rid itself of nuclear power can we be safe from nuclear disaster.

It is poll time in Tamil Nadu and it is natural that some answers are sought about the land, where people are known to be star-crazy, and this is the State that has elected film stars as leaders for more than half a century.

A total of 24,882 new Covid-19 infections on March 12, the highest this year; active cases cross 2 lakh again. That's the progress of a pandemic which likes to kill in waves. Yup, fears are Covid-19 will not go far from where we live, whether that's in Timbuctu, New York, London or Pune in Maharashtra, the city nestling in the shadow of the Raigarh Fort, which once was house to Chatrapati Shivajiji Maharaj. Yes, Pune gives the creeps to those running away from the coronavirus. For, where would/can you run when east, west, north and south, whichever direction you head, there's coronavirus lying in wait!

With observance of Anti-privatisation Day on March 15, 2021, the movement against proposed large scale privatization of Public Sector Undertakings in India will enter a new phase, during which the Modi government will have to face stiff organized resistance not only from the workers’ union of the PSUs but also from the unions, federations, and employees associations from other sectors. Farmers’ unions joining hands for joint call for observance of the Anti-privatisation Day, and support from large number of people’s organization from other sectors will only strengthen the movement.

Justice Indu Malhotra, who retired the other day after a distinguished three-year tenure as a Supreme Court judge, produced what many considered as an outrageous verdict on the Sabarimala women’s entry, but subsequent developments on the vexed issue completely bear her out.

As Narendra Modi addressed the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s mega rally at the Brigade Parade Ground in Kolkata on Sunday afternoon, a Bengali TV channel was showing, on a split screen, chief minister (CM) Mamata Banerjee’s meeting in Siliguri. When Modi raised the pitch on allegations of “cut money and syndicates” under the Trinamool Congress (TMC) rule, the channel switched its audio to Banerjee. At that moment, she was coming down heavily on the Modi government for its proposals of privatisation and corruption in central schemes.