South Asia Citizens Web

The PUCL demands the release of Abhay Sahoo, stopping all repression in that area and the withdrawal of all criminal cases against Abhay Sahoo and other struggling people. It also urges the Government to restore normalcy so that people could get on with their daily life and address their everyday.

M.G. Mendis was perhaps the "undisputed leader" and most prominent trade-union activitist of this militant period in the urban trade-union movement. His active participation continued in the 1946 and 1947 general strikes, and in the 1950s’ when he was involved in several notable struggles. In later years too, he was a prominent activist in the Communist Party and is remembered today as a courageous fighter for the rights of the working class of Sri Lanka.

in 2006, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh resolved to publicly take stock of the conditions of India’s largest religious minority, the Muslims, and appointed for this a High Level Committee chaired by Justice Sachar. For decades, India’s largest opposition party, the BJP, had denounced what they alleged to be a ‘pseudo-secular’ policy of ‘appeasement’ of Indian Muslims, in pursuit of ‘vote-bank’ politics. The report of this Committee lay to rest this long-orchestrated political untruth, by demonstrating that on most socio-economic indicators, the average condition of Muslims in India was comparable to, or even worse than the country’s acknowledged historically most disadvantaged communities, the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. This was evidence not of favoured treatment, but cumulative and comprehensive official discrimination and neglect. Therefore the constitution of this Committee by the Prime Minister was in itself was an act of political sagacity and courage. But, as we will observe, the government has displayed lack of nerve and loss of the same courage and conviction when called upon to address the development deficits in the Muslim community which were diagnosed by the Sachar Committee.

What does this Budget mean for the economic welfare of the larger population? Is there a neoliberal logic reflected in the Budget? Can the economy withstand the volatile global financial markets?

An increasing proportion of workers today falls in the category of migrant labour; between 185 million to 192 million according to 2005 estimates. Most of them come from poor countries of the so-called Third World. Given their bottom line position in terms of economic, civic, and physical conditions, the United Nations itself was moved in 2003 to adopt an International Convention on Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families. It is perhaps not surprising that most labour exporting and receiving countries including India, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, have not signed or ratified the Convention; neither have the most developed capitalist countries taken those steps, including the United States, Germany and Japan.