'The Hindu notions of purity and pollution, inextricably linked with the caste system and the practice of untouchability, underlie the unsanitary practices in Indian society. These beliefs perpetuate the oppression of the “polluted castes,” who are forced to undertake manual scavenging, unclog manholes and clean other people’s filth. The availability of cheap Dalit labour to do these dehumanising jobs can be cited as one of the reasons why development of toilet facilities and a modern garbage and sewage management system have been neglected so far.
Early this morning the room from which IFTU National Committee member Com. Radheyshyam operates in Greater Noida was set on fire and more than 500 books, manuscripts and papers related to trade union work, photographs of great teachers of working class and great patriots like Bhagat Singh and Chandrashekhar Azad were totally gutted. Com. Radheyshyam is the ex-President of the Shramik Sangh of Denso India Ltd., a multinational company. On 29th September Com. Radheyshyam had led a team of the workers’ leaders of the company [t]o the home of their colleague whose brother, Aflaq Ahmed, was lynched in Bisada village the previous night. Aflaq had worked in Denso for some time as a temporary worker while his brother is a permanent workman of Denso. The arsonists specifically attacked this room; Com. Radheyshyam owns this flat but lives somewhere else. The room is above the floor which is empty and was left untouched. His relative lives on the ground floor and woke in the morning in time to see someone going out from the house. He found his house bolted from the outside and his power switched off from the meter. Meanwhile neighbour saw smoke emanating from the rood and alerted Com. Radheyshyam.
"A shocking new report on the automotive sector questions whether manufacturing in India can ever deliver on its promises without offering a safe environment for workers... With the Indian auto industry – which produced 23.37 million vehicles in 2014-15 and attracted FDI of $12.2 billion between 2000 and 2015 – all set to play a central role in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call to “Make in India’’, an alarming new report on shop floor injuries in the automotive sector has questioned whether “Make in India” can be successful without first ensuring that manufacturing is ‘safe in India’.
In record numbers workers across the country struck work today. Through the length and breadth of the country, workers from all sectors in tens of millions stood in solidarity with one and another to tell the BJP government that its writ will not run and that they will not accept the attack on wages and trade union rights.
"With changing social equations putting enormous pressure on Left politics in Kerala, the Sangh Parivar is on a quiet roll. Can the Left wing marshal a response?... Anup Yasodharan grew up on Marxist slogans in Pattakkala, a hilly village by the Manimala river in Central Travancore. His grandfather and father were active workers of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)]. Today, the articulate and polite 22-year-old is the leader of a Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) shakha in his village. Anup’s baptism into Hindutva is instructive.
'Far from being ‘useless’, the MNREGA helps the impoverished and resilient poor earn a decent living... Famously on the floor of Parliament, Prime Minister Modi dismissed the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) as a ‘living monument’ of the previous governments’ failures, condemning millions of impoverished people to survive by ‘digging ditches’. This spring near Bhim in Rajasthan, I had the rare experience of labouring on an MGNREGA site.
India has not ratified International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention on decent work for domestic workers as the national laws and practices are not in conformity with the provisions laid down by the global agency, Parliament was informed today. “Government of India has not ratified ILO Convention No.189 on Decent Work for Domestic Workers,” Labour Minister Bandaru Dattatreya said in a written reply to Rajya Sabha.
New Delhi, 2 March 2015: The Union Budget of 2015-16, the BJP government’s first full budget, has a sense of triumphalism that it ‘can fly’ because it believes that , the ‘opportunity for this exist because we (the BJP government) have created it’ over the last nine-and-a-half months. This government is taking credit for conditions and circumstances that it has nothing to do with or did not, in the remotest way, have the ability or opportunity to contribute to.
'More than 12 bills which are not financial in nature but have political significance are likely to be tabled in the state assembly's budget session scheduled to begin from February 23. In addition to these, there will be several financial bills introduced for approval of budget proposals. Several of these bills have already been submitted to the assembly office for tabling during the budget session. On such bill is the Labour Laws (Gujarat Amendment) Bill. The state government has proposed several amendments in various labour laws through this one bill.
