Editorial

EVEN as India is faced with the enormous public health emergency caused by the Covid19 epidemic and the massive socio-economic crisis triggered and aggravated by the lockdown in force since 25 March, Chinese and Indian troops clashed in the Galwan valley area in the Ladakh sector of China-India LAC on 15/16 June resulting in the death of twenty Indian soldiers including one colonel and reportedly also some unspecified and unconfirmed casualties on the Chinese side.

THE clash between the Indian and Chinese troops in the Galwan valley area along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in the Ladakh sector marks a new flashpoint of friction between the two neighbours. It is the first major case of border skirmish between India and China since 1975, and given the growing scale of casualties on both sides it is the worst since the Nathu La and Cho La clashes on September 11-14 and October 1, 1967, along the Sikkim border.

INDIA'S Home Minister Amit Shah, who remained invisible for most of India’s prolonged lockdown so far, addressed a digital rally for Bihar on 7 June. Though Shah called it only a ‘Jan Samvad’ or ‘communication with the people’, for all purposes it inaugurated the BJP’s poll campaign for the Assembly elections due later this year. The rally was also part of the Modi government’s mega campaign to celebrate the sixth anniversary of Modi’s prime ministership and pat its own back in the name of what it calls the Modi success story of combating the Covid19 pandemic.

THE USA is witnessing a massive uprising against institutional racist bias and violence in the police. The trigger for the uprising was a recent incident where white police officers in Minneapolis held George Floyd, an African American man, face-down on the street as one of them choked him to death with his knee on Floyd’s neck. The policemen continued to choke Floyd publicly even as he cried out repeatedly that he could not breathe and was dying.

IN his 12 May address while preaching his gospel of treating the Covid19 pandemic crisis as an opportunity and outlining his latest rhetoric of an Aatma Nirbhar Bharat, Prime Minister Narendra Modi dropped some big numbers. He announced a package worth around 20 lakh crore rupees (20K billion rupees or $ 265 bn) or about 10% of India’s GDP. Over the next five days Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman and her deputy Anurag Thakur (better known for his vitriolic Goli Maro speeches) have given us the details of this package in five tranches.

MARX was a revolutionary realist to the core. For him the real was primarily material and motion was the mode of existence of matter. He was always rooted in the objective social reality, but acknowledging reality was never justifying the status quo, but making every effort to transform the social reality and secure emancipation from all bondage.

MAY DAY is the International Day of Workers. The inspiration came from the first big battle to regulate hours of work, to limit the working day to eight hours. May Day is still about the working day, especially in India where  the government is stretching it back to twelve hours in the middle of the Coronavirus lockdown. May Day is about paid holidays for all workers. And let us remember there are still millions of workers in India who are not even recognised as workers.

THIS year we are observing Ambedkar Jayanti in the shadow of a killer global epidemic and under the crushing weight of a countrywide lockdown. We cannot physically assemble to pay our tribute, but as is always the case, we must draw inspiration from his emancipatory struggles, ideas and legacy.

WE are now entering the third week of the three-week-long countrywide lockdown. The lockdown has been the only decisive and concrete response of the Modi government to the Covid-19 pandemic and the government has gone all out to enforce it with all its might. Looking at the rate of growth and spread of the pandemic in India we do not really know how far the lockdown has so far been successful.