COMRADE Sitaram Yechury, general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), is no more. After a brief illness, he succumbed to a serious respiratory infection, becoming the first general secretary of the Party to pass away while in office. However, to describe Comrade Sitaram solely as the general secretary would be an incomplete portrayal of his contributions.

TO write about Comrade Sitaram Yechury in the past tense is exceedingly difficult and painful for me. For five decades our political lives have been closely and intricately intertwined while we have together gone through various phases and ups and downs of the Party and the Left movement. Our comradeship began 50 years ago, beginning at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in 1974, continuing in the Students’ Federation of India and later in the Party.

The continuous debilitation of Palestinians should have been a profound political and human rights issue for India’s disability movement, yet it received scant attention.EVERY year, the month of July is celebrated globally as Disability Pride Month, as the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990 was passed on July 26, 1990. One may contest the imposition of this ‘pride’ over the disabled of the Global South who face a precarious situation due to imperialist wars, settler colonialism, and neo-liberal economic policies.

THE horrifying incident at R G Kar Medical College Hospital on August 9 was a global first. Never before has a doctor been raped and murdered on duty at a top government hospital. This wasn't a random act; it was the inevitable outcome of a crime wave fuelled by the ruling party's corruption in the state's health sector. Rampant corruption, nepotism, and embezzlement have crippled the health department in the last thirteen years, worsening after the 2021 elections. After the 2021 elections, corruption ran rampant, and crime spiralled out of control.

On September 14, the body of Comrade Sitaram Yechury will be kept at the Communist Party of India (Marxist) headquarters, A K Gopalan Bhavan, Gole Market, New Delhi for public viewing and paying homage between 11.00 am and 3.00 pm.