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The flurry of news on migrant workers’ issues in August-September has implications for policy. First came the strike threat by 7–8 lakh migrant sugarcane workers in Maharashtra, who were demanding doubling of the wages from the present Rs.200 per tonne. Powerloom workers in Surat, including five lakh migrants from Orissa, went on flash strikes demanding weekly holidays on Sundays and are threatening a strike demanding a wage of Rs.600 per day as against Rs.180–200 they are being paid currently and rejecting the minimum wage of Rs.276, Rs.284 and Rs.293 respectively for unskilled, semi-skilled and skilled workers announced in April. But then there is no provision in the minimum wage law to ban employing workers at sub-subsistence wages in all occupations below a general minimum.

The BJP President, Amit Shah, has claimed that the saffron party will not only increase his party’s tally in 2019 general elections — get more seats than it obtained in 2014 polls — and, thereafter, it will rule India for 50 years. The assertion was made at as high a forum as the National Executive of the BJP. The claim is ridiculous and dangerous. Former BJP minister and now a rebel, Arun Shourie, has reportedly said that 2019 will be the last election. If Shourie’s observation is linked with Shah’s claim, it may mean that the country is heading for dictatorship. A writer and journalist, Shourie knows both Narendra Modi and Shah quite intimately and how their mind works.

Medical negligence, overcharging, substandard care, wide spread production of spurious drugs by pharmaceutical companies, bribery of doctors by pharmaceutical companies with trips to foreign countries including sundry pleasures, even financing education of their wards abroad, drug procurement scams, underhand commissions, a wide spread racket in medical college admissions, glaring failure of regulators like Medical Council of India (MCI), Nursing and Dental Councils and Drug Controller in ensuring quality of drugs and services, speak volume of rampant corruption in healthcare across diverse medical profession in India.

It is confusing, this democracy so confusing. Take Vijay Mallya, he’s a fugitive. The case against him in the United Kingdom magistrate’s court is for extradition. But questions are asked on “settlement” and his response is always “I want to settle” but on his terms, which includes a comfortable stay in jail. “Is there a jail in India which can promise a comfortable stay?” asked the court and India produced video-proof.

With less than three weeks to go until the October 7 national elections, the political situation in Brazil remains extremely unsettled. The jailing of the most popular candidate of the left Lula de Silva has been followed by the serious wounding of the most popular candidate on the right, and now there are not-so-veiled threats of a military coup.

The People of India have registered their anger over the most regressive policies of the RSS- BJP government in unequivocal terms. On September 10, the country witnessed it in the form of massive resistance organised by the left and other political parties including the Congress. Though the call was given separately due to obvious reasons, the fire of protest reflected by the people cutting across political affiliations was one and the same. Masses are coming out to fight their battles to put an end to the hated rule of Narendra Modi.

Medicine is not a profession but a passion. Patient-doctor relationship is one of mutual trust based on doctors’ devotion to the patient as a human being in totality. Doctor in the past was fully connected to the family of the patient and had continuous information about her/his health problems. In old days, when medicine was not so much developed, clinicians (Vaid) at the maximum would check the pulse and put hand on the abdomen to form opinion of the disease.

The controversy over the circumstances under which the bankrupt Kingfisher Airlines owner left for London on March 2, 2016, has now thickened following the fugitive telling newsmen in UK after the latest court hearing that he met the finance minister Arun Jaitley on March 1 and told him that he was leaving for London next day. Without going into the exact nature of the meeting- whether it was a chance meeting forced by the Rajya Sabha member Vijay Mallya in central hall of Parliament or it was a serious sit down meeting for 15 to 20 minutes as stated by the Congress Rajya Sabha member P L Punia, the moot point is there was a meeting and if it was correct that Mallya told Jaitley that he was leaving next day, it was a gross failure on the part of the Finance Minister not to inform the CBI or ED about this.

A profound crisis of governance now grips the entire executive branch of the United States government. The hot-off-the-press revelations contained in Bob Woodward’s tell-all account of White House dysfunction in his new book, Fear, along with The New York Times anonymously by-lined op-ed by a senior government official describing an in-house “resistance” has pushed this crisis even closer to the edge.

Anyone who says socialism and love of country don’t mix better take a look at Portugal’s Communist Party and think again. If there is any group here that can claim a history of fighting for the best interests of the whole nation while also being true to the global struggle for change, it’s the Portuguese Communists. This is the party, after all, that kept the flame of democracy burning even during a half-century of fascist dictatorship and secret police terror.