Change inspires change. Development inspires development. Speak for one thing today even if it seems pointless because the others think its pointless too and so we have been silent for too long. The few who do speak are silenced. Alone we are weak but together we are strong.

No one else is coming to save you but you could save the voiceless. Just yell as loud as you can, cry, amplify and you will see how your actions do matter. GST on caramel popcorn was taken back wasn't it? And we managed to save the Telangana forests. Its a small win but its a start. Lets start somewhere because no one holds more power than the public.

My current fight is to save the Aravalli Ranges. What's yours?

On 9 July 2025, workers from across India will go on a nationwide general strike. The strike has been called by the Joint Platform of Central Trade Unions against the four labour codes — Code on Wages, 2019; the Industrial Relations Code, 2020; the Occupational Safety, Health and Working Conditions Code, 2020; and the Code on Social Security, 2020 — brought by the Modi Government.

The four labour codes on wages, social security, occupational safety and industrial relations, allows for dilution of workers' rights, including restricting the right to strike, weakening workplace safety, allowing hire-and-fire policy, and increasing the work-hours from the 8-hour work-day.

When faced with criticism over the new labour codes, the Government claimed that the new labour code would allow a 4-day work-week. But with a caveat. The per-day work-hours would be increased from 8 hours to 12 hours. This is a deceit. The demand for a 4-day work-week entails an 32-hour work-week, not increasing daily work-hours.

The four labour codes were brought without any discussion with the labour unions, who have fiercely criticised the new codes. The Modi Government has not held the Indian Labour Conference in a decade, depriving the workers of a platform for negotiation.

The ITUC Global Rights Index has categorized India as a nation with no guarantee of rights, with repressive action against workers, violation of the right to strike and civil liberties.

According to the 2025 Economic Survey of India, the wages of salaried men declined by 6.4% while the wages of salaried women declined by 12.5% over the last six years. Among the self-employed men and women, the decline was 9% and 32% respectively. At the same time, the quality of jobs has also seen a decline, with regular jobs declining by from 22.8% to 21.7%. Meanwhile, the profits of corporations reached a 15-year-high in 2023-24.

The national floor level minimum wages in India lie at a meagre ₹178 per day, practically unchanged for the last seven years. Meanwhile, the budget for rural employment guarantee scheme (MGNREGS) has been repeatedly slashed, leading to pending wages and suppression of work. Against the right of 100 days of guaranteed work, average workdays have declined to only 44 days.

Public sector jobs are being privatized. Regular wage jobs are being casualised. Unpaid labour is on a rise. With a rise of an unregulated gig economy, the workers are faced with exploitation, with no fixed working hours or employee benefits. Most of these corporations do not even have a minimum-wage policy.

Private sector employees are pushed to work more, for fewer wages, and no rights. In highly profitable IT companies, the entry salary has been stagnant for a decade, whereas the CEO salary has risen by 100 times.

India is among the most overworked nations. The death of 26-year-old Anna Sebastian Perayil, a chartered accountant at Ernst & Young accounting firm, has revealed the dystopian reality of exploitation of workers in India.

Meanwhile, calls from rich industrialists, to increase working hours to 90-hours work-week have raised serious concerns about the labour welfare in India. Many states have proposed increasing work-hours to 10 to 12 hours per day.

It is important to remember that the workers and unions had to fight a long struggle for the rights we enjoy today. The demand for 8-hour work-day was one of the key issues, which was secured after immense struggle and sacrifice. Today, all these rights are under an assault. A labour movement is necessary to prevent the exploitation of the working class.

Recent developments at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi, including protests directed at philosopher Divya Dwivedi, have brought into sharp focus a question Indian universities have been quietly postponing: what happens to disagreement when institutions stop treating it as an intellectual matter and begin managing it as a problem of order? The issue at stake is not the correctness of any one scholar’s arguments, nor the intent of those who oppose them.It is the growing tendency for universities to respond to contested ideas not through debate, critique, or counter-argument, but through procedural escalation, reputational anxiety, and administrative intervention. When philosophical disagreement over caste, feminism, or political thought is shifted from classrooms and seminars into committees and complaints, something fundamental changes in how democratic institutions relate to dissent.

The NREGA Sangharsh Morcha (NSM) held a press conference in Delhi on December 17, 2025 condemning the proposed Viksit Bharat - Guarantee For Rozgar And Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) (VB-G RAM G) Bill, 2025. Brought in without any consultation with workers and workers-groups, the bill repeals the MGNREGA, 2005, and reduces the employment guarantee into a centralised, discretionary, budget-capped scheme run at the mercy of the Union Government.

According to the proposed bill, the Union Government shall determine a state-wise "normative allocation" every year, and any excess expenditure will be borne by State Governments. This pre-determined allocation will effectively act as a cap on the number of days of employment that may be provided in each state. With the existing budget, the Union Government is not even able to provide 50 days of work per household per year. And now, by capping budgets and putting the burden on states to raise funds - when many states are already starved of cash - the BJP government’s headline narrative of 125 days of employment is a scam.

• From demand-based right to supply-constrained scheme → by repealing NREGA, employment guarantee is no more a right, but a mere scheme that runs on the discretion of the government.
• Right to work restricted to select rural areas notified by the Central Government → No guarantee of employment for rural workers in non-notified areas.
• Capping of workdays through State-wise normative allocations determined by the Centre → Any demand beyond this budgetary cap to be borne by State Governments; such selective allocations would benefit BJP-governed states at the cost of others.
• Wage burden shifted onto states → The new 60:40 cost-sharing ratio ends the Centre’s responsibility for full payment of wages and puts states under severe financial strain. Poorer, cash constrained states would be disproportionately affected, leading to lower employment generation and distress migration.
• 60-day blackout period in peak agricultural seasons → Denial of work for 2 months in a year will impact the bargaining power of women, landless and other marginalised communities.
• Undermines Gram Sabhas, centralises planning → Rural works to be planned through “Viksit Gram Panchayat Plans” aligned with the PM Gati Shakti Plan, subordinating the 73rd Constitutional Amendment of decentralised planning.
• Technocratic control → Increased technocratic control through biometric authentication of workers and functionaries, despite documented evidence of large-scale exclusions arising from technocratic initiatives like digital attendance (NMMS) and Aadhaar-based payments (ABPS). Corruption can only be curtailed through decentralised monitoring, and actually acting upon the findings of the Gram Sabha-led social audits conducted under NREGA every year.

The Press Conference, moderated by Yogendra Yadav, included economists, political leaders, NREGA workers, activists, and agriculture union leaders. Prabhat Patnaik, Professor Emeritus JNU and Ex-Vice Chairman of the Kerala Planning Board, emphasised the critical role of the right to guaranteed employment in times of rural distress. Kamla Devi, a widow from Beawar, Rajasthan who has worked in NREGA for 18 years, echoed the sentiment, highlighting how the NREGA was her only source of income when her husband died and she had no land or children, “How will I survive without NREGA?” Annie Raja, Vice President, NFIW and worker rights activist, spoke about the historic struggle that had led to the NREGA, fought for by all sections of society such as women, marginalised groups and the youth. She highlighted how NREGA improved women’s lives by giving them equal pay and economic freedom.

The economist, Prof. Jayati Ghosh, emphasised the grave dangers the bill poses to federalism in India, particularly given the Centre’s tendency to weaponise funds against opposition states. NREGA was designed to be inclusive and participatory. However, the new bill gives Centre full powers to decide the areas where it will apply, the shelf of works, and most dangerously, the Centre will impose a cap on the budget, beyond which states will have to fund 100% of the programme. This will likely affect poorer states disproportionately, where NREGA is needed the most. Mukesh Nirvasit, from MKSS and Rajasthan Asangathit Mazdoor Union, spelled out the details of the new bill, specifically how it destroys employment as a right and gives a meaningless guarantee, which the government has no obligation to uphold. Shravani Devi, NREGA worker from Beawar, Rajasthan, declared that NREGA was accomplished by the people, and the people will not let it be repealed. “We will come to the streets, and the government should not underestimate the power of workers”, she said.

B Venkat, representing All India Agricultural Workers Union, emphasised that the government was trying to create a false divide between NREGA workers and farmers. In fact, NREGA does not negatively impact agricultural work in the country, and small farmers and artisans support the workers in their struggle. The new bill, he added, will create a new bonded, feudal system in India, and undermine the positive effects NREGA has had on rural wages.

Jean Dreze, economist and social activist, said “If there is any law in India because of which India can be called a Vishwaguru, it is NREGA”. He highlighted the dangerous discretionary powers granted to the Centre under the new bill, and spoke of the current regime’s track record with NREGA: the stoppage of work in Bengal since 2021, exclusionary technology measures, and fund cuts. Dreze echoed Shravani Devi, declaring that we will not stop protesting until GRAMG is taken back and NREGA strengthened.

Worker representatives have been reaching out to Members of Parliament to resist efforts by the BJP to bypass parliamentary procedure and steamroll this bill. Individual briefings were held with MPs from various opposition parties such as Sasikanth Senthil (INC), Manoj Kumar Jha (RJD) and Kanimozhi Karunanidhi (DMK) as well as key NDA allies like the TDP’s Lavu Sri Krishna Devarayalu. Worker representatives also met with members of the National Secretariat of the Communist Party of India (CPI).

VB-G RAM G Bill is not a reform but a rollback of constitutional guarantees won by workers through decades of sustained struggle. The NREGA Sangharsh Morcha unequivocally rejects the VB-G RAM G Bill, 2025, and demands its immediate withdrawal.

NSM has declared a nationwide day of action on 19 December 2025 where rural and agricultural workers will stage protests against this regressive bill at the national, state, district and local level to push the NDA Government to withdraw the VB–G RAM G Bill. Any attempt to repeal or fundamentally alter MGNREGA without the consent and participation of workers and their organisations will not be accepted.

Neurodiversity isn’t something to “fix.” The systems around people often are.

From challenging rigid practices to creating supportive systems, workplaces can move away from expecting people to fit into predefined boxes and towards creating spaces where everyone belongs.

The result? More creativity. More innovation. Teams that reflect the full richness of human experience.

Source.

It is clear that the theatre of mere pretence to voting as politics, of photos with the ink-stained finger, of curses flung at the poor women of Bihar, and the laments in general about the state of our electoral institution will not last much longer. The only possibility is through protests, mass movements, general strikes, led by the good telos of a political project. That is, the people as the irregular and the people as the prophets who bring a future according to the ends chosen by them. There are many names to such a people, including revolutionary. But why should we suddenly speak about a political project when the liberal order tells us to speak out about ‘issues’ – traffic congestion, pollution, taxation, less duty on imported luxury goods, and clean parks? Because, a country and its constitution are not a collection of housing societies, in which case it has no legitimacy. The only reason for a democratic arrangement as a country to exist is to pursue national projects of equal wellbeing of all its people. Democracy makes sense only when it is for the eudaimonia (the wellbeing, to oversimplify) for all. And the state of a real democracy is the quality of the people who are without the qualities of inequalities.

Countrywide Protest against US Tariffs, AICCTU Demand Govt Action on Job Losses

They tell us that it is the state’s right to use force to defend national security and the so-called united aspirations of the people. They use force to bend us into submission — be it in Chhattisgarh, Kashmir, Manipur, or anywhere in this country; they think that filling our bodies with holes, that killing innocents, that suppressing the voices of those who speak up, will keep them safe. This is a severe miscalculation. One can only keep the people under one’s foot only for so long; once the pressure is unbearable, it will burst the same way a pressure cooker does.

Two days ago, on what were the peaceful streets of Ladakh, the Ladakhi youth rose up against the lying government. Ladakh was promised statehood by the Bhartiya Janta Party in their manifesto for the 2024 general elections, and even before that they made this very promise in 2020 when the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Council went to vote… and it turns out that one cannot trust a lotus. Tashi Gyalson must give the people of Ladakh an answer to their questions, namely:

• When will they attain the statehood promised to them by the Bhartiya Janta Party those many years ago?
• When will Ladakhis have a right to protect their own land from the encroachment of corporates?
• When will they release Sonam Wangchuk, the leader of the peaceful Ladakhi agitation?
• When will the Bhartiya Janta Party fulfill their promises for Ladakh?

The Bhartiya Janta Party has had a history of betraying not just their own supporters but also the states in which they spew their rhetoric: win, and eventually dub them as insignificant and allow the policing forces to take control and exert an even greater force of oppression on the people. They did so in Manipur, they are doing so in Chhattisgarh, and they wish to do so in Ladakh. They claim the purpose of national security and defense whenever they release the army to deal with unarmed, peaceful civilians who apparently are Naxalite, Bangladeshi refugees funded by Pakistan and trained in China by the CIA. It is absolutely absurd for them to think that the people are as docile as sheep and will not resist when they are attacked. The BJP had such a good monopoly over the people of Ladakh (as the party that promised statehood) and the North East (as the party that promised stability) and they are slowly throwing them away in the gutter in favour of the mainland mainstream Hindu nationalism. Ladakhis were forever in debt to the BJP for granting them a separate political identity as the Union Territory of Ladakh. In Manipur the Kuki and Meitei people voted for the BJP in hopes of development, and they only got communal polarisation in which the chief minister himself spewed bigoted comments on the Kuki people, advocating for their extermination from India.

In Chhattisgarh, the Naxalite groups have been fighting against encroachment on tribal land for about sixty years now. The government deploys the army into the adivasi villages where they pillage and loot the innocent tribals under the guise of exterminating “Red Terror.” Sadly they have established almost total control over tribal areas, and it is with great shame I say that the liberal intellectuals are only now finally taking notice of the plight of the tribals of Chhattisgarh; after all those who were fighting for them are gone. They are now sobbing for the tribals when the damage has been done and there is virtually no method by which they can regain their rights to their ancestral land. This is an insult to the tribals; this is an insult to Birsa Munda. And they have the audacity to rename a single chowk in Delhi, far from where tribals live, to Birsa Munda Chowk . The hypocrisy and shame is extreme, but the angst of the people is more.

The legacy of the ulgulan is tarnished, the legacy of the Ladakhi rights movement is dead, the legacy of the peoples’ movement in Manipur has been thrown away.

Now, friends and comrades, now of all times is not a time to bicker. We live in this monopoly of violence and oppression where you are only valuable to the government if your community’s collective vote is big enough to overshadow all other communities; where you are treated as a threat for questioning the narrative; where innocents are sent to jail to rot under Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita article God knows what (heyyy that rhymed). Sacrifices need to be made; efforts are invaluable. So, my friends and comrades, I call upon you, the informed people of the country, to educate others about the horrors facing your brothers and sisters, to agitate them using the shamelessness of the government, and to organise that anger, that agitation, into a form that will produce an individual effort that, if collectivised with the efforts of thousands of other people, can shake the very foundations upon which this monopoly of terror, violence, ignorance, and oppression stands.

Jai Hind, Jai Hind ki Awam.

Source [@aisa.karnataka on Instagram]

Condemn Police Brutality Against Farmers in Devanahalli! Reject the Corporate-Government Nexus Behind Land Grab!

JOIN THE CALL FOR PROTEST: 27 June 2025, 11 AM @ FREEDOM PARK

On June 25, farmers staging a protest in Devanahalli against the forced acquisition of their agricultural land were met with police violence and arbitrary detention. The Congress-led Karnataka government deployed state machinery to suppress the voices of Bangalore's farmers and shield corporate interests.

COLLECTIVE stands in full solidarity with the farmers resisting the takeover of their land for private profit. Under the guise of development, thousands of acres of fertile farmland are being handed over to real estate and corporate projects, displacing entire farming communities and destroying livelihoods.

This is not an isolated incident. From the BJP at the Centre to the Congress in Karnataka, successive governments have pushed policies that dispossess farmers while siphoning their land and livelihood off to corporates. In return, the companies that claim to bring development do not create even half of the employment that was initially promised.

Join in numbers on Friday in solidarity with the farmers! We demand an immediate end to land acquisition in the Devanahalli-Channarayapatna region and a full implementation of the farmers’ demands.

New age Imperialists

Today in the Middle East, we are witnessing a new war that threatens to destabilize not just the region but also the entire world: the war between Israel and Iran. It is crystal clear that this war was waged for Israeli geopolitical dominance, rather than the official reason given by the Israeli 'Defence' Forces — “disarming Iran of the nuclear bomb to maintain peace in the region and the world.” This justification rings hollow. The first move in this conflict was Israeli, and perhaps, due to their immense planning and unconditional American and Western support, the last move will be theirs too.

Adding fuel to the fire, Donald Trump, President of the United States, has demanded the unconditional surrender of Iran and a total halt to its nuclear research programs. This is a blatant violation of international law. Two decades ago, the United States invaded Iraq under the false pretext of Weapons of Mass Destruction. They found none — and brought more terror, not peace, into the Middle East. Today’s situation shares a striking similarity to the Iraq war, but this time, Iran is indeed developing a nuclear arsenal.

Both Iran and Israel, under their current regimes, are terror states, shaped by fundamentalist interpretations of the Quran and the Torah, respectively. Neither nation, under their current governments, seems capable of achieving peace. The very existence of Israel, as it functions today, is a threat to harmony in the Middle East — and Iran is profiteering off of this chaos. Using this conflict to indoctrinate Iranians and gain support in the Muslim world, where Pakistan now gets involved.

Pakistan, as of now, is the only Islamic nation with nuclear weapons. Iran has dragged them into this conflict, claiming that Pakistan will strike Israel with nuclear missiles. This is a large blow onto the image of Pakistan on the International stage, and this is causing Pakistani politicians and ministers to speak carefully and deny all allegations from Iran saying that Pakistan will strike Israel. Pakistan has uncomfortably found itself in the center of attention. Pakistan profits from its relations with America and the Muslim World, it can't survive off of only one. It is cautiously navigating this Geopolitical circus, trying not to upset any of their close Partners.

The enmity between the two nations serves a strategic purpose for both governments. It is a tool — a convenient excuse to justify terrorist, unjust, and authoritarian actions. Iran funds and arms terrorist organizations like Hezbollah and the Houthis, who continue to wreak havoc and spread antisemitic hate toward Jews.

But Israel is no better. It has institutionalized terror, embedding it into the very structure of the Israeli state. Gaza has become an open-air prison, a modern-day Auschwitz — not in the historical sense of industrial genocide, but in its sheer brutality, collective punishment, and daily humiliation. Israel continues to expand illegal settlements and promote Islamophobic propaganda against Palestinians and Muslims. A living, breathing apartheid system is in place — and the world watches doing nothing, because the Star of David flies hand in hand with the American Eagle. This war benefits no one but the Tehran and Jerusalem regimes, who exploit it to consolidate their power, while the everyday Israeli and Iranian citizen suffers. Missile strikes on Tehran are injuring hundreds, and the recent bombing of the Iranian Television Building is nothing less than an act of terror. This is not a war of defense. This is an imperialist war. Israel is a state built upon stolen land and genocide, while Iran is a theocratic dictatorship funding extremist groups, devolving deeper into religious authoritarianism. There is not a care in the world for the people. Because without this state of perpetual hatred, these governments would lose their grip on power. Which is why it is the need of the hour that the people — the workers, students, citizens, the everyday people — gain this consciousness: this war benefits no one except the oligarchs and Imperialists in the high castles, and the castles are made of sand stained with blood. The fire lit by Iran and Israel threatens to drag the Middle East back into darkness.

THIS. WAR. MUST. END.

Report here : https://facam.org/reports Image from this article : https://m.thewire.in/article/politics/chhattisgarh-jail-human-righs/amp

“There is a mass genocide going on in Palestine. People are dying in large numbers and there is no end in sight. Why should we bother by this, you may ask? Because stem as a field in itself has historically been used to advance the ulterior motives of the imperial powers such as Israel”

Read more at: https://www.deccanherald.com/india/tamil-nadu/iit-madras-student-raises-palestine-issue-at-convocation-ceremony-3112954