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The radical shift in labour relations from regimes of standard employment to fragmented and flexibilised labour force under neoliberalism is signified by a radical shift of responsibilities of their production of labour force from the capitalist employer to the State through the denial of indirect wage payments to workers. One of the major achievements of labour movement in the past was the recognition of elements as constituents of wage and benefits that ensured the reproduction of labour force in its totality. The underlying spirit was wages should not only cover the immediate needs of the worker but also should at the minimum be enough to maintain the intergenerational supply of a healthy workforce and the labour force not currently absorbed at work. This was required by capitalism to ensure the supply of workers in future.

KOLKATA: The skies had opened when Uttam Kumar, an icon to Bengalis in every part of the globe passed away on July 24, 1980. Cutting across the generation gap, his fans poured into the streets on that day as the news of his being summoned to the land of the shadows spread like a wildfire.

OKEMAH (USA): The revolutionary spirit of Woody Guthrie permeates his birthplace of Okemah, Okla., where the 27th Annual Woody Guthrie Folk Festival was held July 10-13. There attendees celebrated Woody’s 112th birthday, and modern musicians added their voices to the folk canon. A sense of camaraderie flowed throughout the festival as musicians jammed long into the night and attendees engaged in conversation over shared meals.

Phenomenal rise in the use of smartphones in India has helped the people get everything on their fingertips. This has distracted youth and children from their main goal post of studies, pursuit of excellence in their higher education, turned youth unemployable, those in jobs inefficient and less and less productive, thus ruining their career prospects, as they become addict. In the process, lives of many children and youths are doomed, their families ruined as this has spread like viral.

A transgender, Manvi Madhu Kashyam, has become a police sub-inspector. Coming from a small village, Manvi is the first transgender in India to secure a police job. She is among the three transgender persons selected for the post. While Manvi is a trans-woman, the other two are trans-men. They have chosen not to speak up and identify themselves in public.

A seed of an idea is all you need for success. Sathya Shankar K would know, for there is a tiny seed at the heart of his success story. His life got a kick-start in 1984.

Badal Sircar, the Bengali playwright and director who revolutionised the Indian theatre movement in the late 20th century stepped on to 100 years on Monday July 15.. Hr was born in Calcutta in 1925 and in his 86 years of active life as a pioneer in the theatre movement in Bengal, he introduced a new stream of theatre making called ‘ Third Theatre’ which influenced a number of young theatre people from 1960s to the early 21st century..He passed away in Kolkata on May 13, 2011.

In a scene quintessentially Dutch, outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte bid farewell to his office in The Hague on a bicycle, concluding a remarkable 14-year tenure. This symbolic departure marked the end of an era and the beginning of a new chapter in Dutch politics. Rutte, a stalwart of Dutch governance, passed the baton to his successor, Dick Schoof, in a ceremony presided over by King Willem-Alexander.the World Economic Forum website in 2019, Rutte explained why he rides a bicycle.

Poverty is taken to be a homogeneous phenomenon irrespective of the mode of production that is under consideration. Even reputed economists believe in this homogeneous conception of poverty. In fact, however, poverty under capitalism is entirely different from poverty in pre-capitalist times. Even if for statistical purposes poverty is defined as lack of access to a set of use-values that are essential for living irrespective of the mode of production, the fact remains that this lack is enmeshed under capitalism within a set of social relationships that are sui generis and different from earlier. Poverty under capitalism thus takes a specific form associated with insecurity and indignity that makes it particularly unbearable.

Julian Assange, easily the world’s most persecuted and famous journalist, is free at last. At the moment of writing this column, Assange is onboard a private plane that is costing him half a million dollars (which his family plans to pay off via crowd-funding donations appeal), to fly from Saipan, the capital of Northern Mariana Islands, a US territory in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, to Canberra, Australia, where his family awaits his return as a free man. His 14-year-long ordeal with the Anglo-American national security juggernaut that witch-hunted him most perniciously for his incredibly impactful guerilla journalism exposing countless crimes of the US-led “rules based order”, at last ends. However, the plea bargain that he was compelled to accept because of his failing mental and physical health, of pleading guilty to one count of felony under the obsolete US Espionage Act of 1917, exposes the ongoing injustice by the American empire of grotesque malfeasance.