Category: News

  • Stop the war in Sri Lanka: Protest at India House

    SHOUTING “NOT a rupee, not a bullet for the Rajapakse government”, 100 protesters marched around India House on the Aldwych in London. This was part of the international day of action on 8 April called by Stop the Slaughter of Tamils (SST) campaign, to end the war and fight for democracy in Sri Lanka. This…

  • Editorial: India and Pakistan conflict

    Politicians use terrorism for their own ends Once again, terrorist carnage – this time in Mumbai in India – has shocked working people around the world. In a thoroughly planned and financed operation, a group of right-wing Islamic terrorists turned buildings and streets in Mumbai into a killing field, slaughtering and injuring innocent people, with…

  • Ruling BJP is Swept Aside in India

    A POLITICAL earthquake has rocked south Asia following India’s general election. Millions of workers, the dispossessed and rural poor decisively rejected the ‘neo-liberal’ policies of the ruling Hindu nationalist coalition government led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee. The BJP and its allies (who, historically, have practised a…

  • World Social Forum – Mumbai

    TWO YEARS ago, it was a big thing when the then ‘socialist’ French government sent a delegation to the World Social Forum (WSF) in Porto Alegre, Brazil. At this year’s event in Mumbai, attended by 80,000 people, ministers were no longer a sensation. With the Communist Party of India – Marxist (CPI-M) as one of…

  • World Social Forum: Workers Speak Out

    AS WE reported in last week’s issue of the socialist, over 120,000 people, mainly from the Indian sub-continent and other Asian countries, attended the fourth World Social Forum in the Indian city of Mumbai. Members of the Committee for a Workers International (CWI – the international organisation to which the Socialist Party is affiliated), have sent these…

  • Gujurat earthquake – No ‘natural’ disaster

    IN THE worst ever earthquake that India has seen in the last two centuries, Ahemadabad, Bhuj, Bhachau and the entire Kutch district have been devastated. Ten days after the disaster the most conservative estimate puts the body count at 100,000. The final toll will be at least four times that number as the day of…

  • Bribery, Bofors and the Hinduja brothers

    CORRUPTION CASES are nothing new to India. In recent times some cases have been pursued vigorously and quite a few have been indicted, but the judicial system gives the rich and powerful umpteen loopholes. Bribery cases include former governments buying off opposition MPs to vote for the government on financial bills but nobody has been…