THE 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi, held on September 12-13, 2026, produced a 140-point Declaration that is at once an assertion of Global South aspirations and a mirror to the contradictions of the grouping itself. For the Left, the task is neither to applaud nor to dismiss, but to read the document critically, recognising where it advances the struggle against US-led unipolarity, where it falls short, and where the Indian government's own conduct...
VERY recently the eloquent reticence of the Chief Election Commissioner of India, Gyanesh Kumar, has given way to an extremely brief observation. He has opined that notwithstanding the ‘little inconvenience’ of some citizens, the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) carried out across the country was necessary to clean up the Electoral Rolls for conducting a ‘fair election’. This could be regarded as the...
The Bretton Woods system institutionalized the US dollar as a global reserve currency, with the US pledging to buy and sell gold from foreign governments and central banks at a fixed price of $35 per ounce of gold. The reserve currency role of the dollar was predicated on the belief that there would not be a rush to exchange dollars for gold, that is, on an expectation of stability in the gold price of dollars, which in turn was based on an expectation of stability (at least...
ON September 8, a 27-year-old researcher named Jacob Coxon, a few months into a job at Anthropic (a leading US AI company) after three years at OpenAI, announced his resignation on X. "Neither company is acting responsibly," he wrote. "They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives." Within a day, the post had been read more than 100 million times. Four days later, Anthropic's chief executive,...
It is about a year back that the second-generation GST reforms were introduced in September 2025, and the most important selling point was that a simplified and reduced indirect tax would reduce consumer prices. The media was mobilised to speak in defence of the government as usual, and this was projected as one of the game changers, particularly for industries supposed to be facing sluggish demand. The argument was simple. Indirect taxes if reduced would...
THE passage of the West Bengal Universities and Colleges (Administration and Regulation) (Amendment) Bill, 2026, in the state Assembly on September 10, marks a critical turning point in the governance of higher education in West Bengal. By inserting a provision into Section 14A of the 2017 Act, the amendment empowers the state government to enforce...
The 18th BRICS Summit, held in New Delhi on September 12–13, occurred amid an exceptional intensification of international contradictions. Wars in West Asia, unilateral sanctions, tariff barriers, and the weaponisation of finance and technology have exposed the fundamentally unequal character of the imperialist-dominated international order. Against this background, the continued expansion of BRICS reflects the desire of...
All India Democratic Women's Association (AIDWA) National General Secretary Kaninika Ghosh called upon women to organise struggles to protect their rights and freedoms, stressing that the fight for women's rights must transcend caste and religious divisions. She was speaking at a public meeting held at the M B Vignana Kendram in Vijayawada on September 12, as part of the three-...
THE BJP’s façade of patriotism is repeatedly shattered, and the party stands exposed time and again; yet, it persists in singing the same tune. As the English writer Samuel Johnson famously said, “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.” The BJP’s conduct consistently proves this adage true. A fresh move by the BJP government in Madhya Pradesh...
Penguin Random House is one of the largest publishers in the world. An imprint of PRH is publishing Sonia Gandhi’s memoir in the United States, with an initial print run of 100,000 copies. Penguin India, however, has refused to publish the memoir in India. This is extraordinary. The book was going to be a massive commercial success, even if there had been no controversy around it. Penguin’s decision to back out of publishing it made no commercial sense at all. Sonia Gandhi, a...
Polit Bureau StatementsCPI(M) Polit Bureau has issued the following statements
Condemn BJP Government’s Disgraceful Position on Venezuela |
