THE MGNREGS was introduced by the UPA-I government despite opposition from the neo-liberal lobby within it, owing inter alia to the active intervention of the Left which was supporting that government from outside. It was restrictive from the beginning: it promised a maximum of only 100 days of employment in a year, and that too for just one member of a rural household. But within those restrictions it conferred an economic right: employment could not be refused and if it was not provided within a certain period then the person seeking employment had to be paid a compensation.

THE 23rd state conference of Punjab state committee of CPI(M) was held at Ludhiana from November 24-25, 2021. Sitaram Yechury, CPI(M) general secretary  along with Nilotpal Basu, Polit Bureau member and in-charge of Punjab state committee  remained present on both days to  guide  the conference  on behalf of the Central Committee. Gurchetan Singh Bassi unfurled the Party Flag.

CPI(M) Polit Bureau has issued the following statement on November 30THE Polit Bureau of the CPI(M) condemns and rejects the utterly false and malicious accusations being made by the BJP MLA of Loni, Ghaziabad against Polit Bureau member Brinda Karat of  “encouraging cow slaughter” of “creating communal disharmony”  etc., and trying to pressure police to file an FIR against her.This is after a CPI(M) delegation led by Brinda Karat visited the homes of the victims of the recent police atrocity in Loni,  where the police inflicted identical injuries on seven young men, all Muslims in

OMICRON, a new SARS-CoV-2 strain, first detected in the Gauteng province of South Africa, has been acknowledged by WHO as a “variant of concern”. Already, cases have been reported from other countries, making clear that Omicron is unlikely to be contained geographically. If it outperforms Delta in creating new infections, it may then replace Delta as the dominant variant in Covid-19 infections, as Delta has done to the earlier variants.

ON NOVEMBER 30, 2021, Left Democratic Front mobilised thousands of people to express state’s protest against center’s approach to sabotage the developmental projects.  Dharnas organised in district centers have sent a strong message to the central government and the Congress led opposition, who join hands with the the centre to disrupt the developmental pace.Kerala Chief Minister, Pinarayi Vijayan, while inaugurating a dharna before Raj Bhavan in Thiruvananthapuram, said that the central projects are the rights of the state, not a general gift of the central government.