THE union ministry of human resource development has circulated a draft of the Universities for Innovation Bill 2010 in the middle of this year. Under the provisions of this bill, universities for innovation will be established with full public funding, private funding or in public-private partnership. These universities are intended to make India the global knowledge hub and will set benchmarks for excellence for other central and state universities. These universities will be based on different themes, focussing on one area or problem of significance to India.
These universities will be set up not through acts of Parliament, but through signing of memoranda of agreement (MoA) between the central government and the private promoters, companies, trusts or foreign universities established outside India for at least fifty years and recognised as amongst the ‘foremost’ universities of the world. Specific norms about the credibility of these promoters or even for the scrutiny of their MoAs have not been provided. Thus the bill provides tremendous freedom to private promoters or predators in higher education.
UNFETTERED FREEDOM
The memorandum of agreement of each university for innovation will include its name and location, the areas of studies, the capital investment plan for its establishment, the sources of financing the capital investment and the financial contribution of the central government, and the constitution of the board of governors. The central government will publish every memorandum of agreement in the official gazette to take effect. The MoA will be laid before each house of parliament.
The universities for innovation will have all-India jurisdictions with freedom to establish campuses anywhere in India and foreign countries. It is expected that they will provide teaching and research facilities of standards comparable or superior to the best universities in the world. These universities will enjoy unfettered freedom.
They will be free to evolve their own admission criteria, determine the nomenclature of their degrees and other academic distinctions awarded by them irrespective of the provisions of UGC Act, decide their own fee structure and other charges, appoint teachers, and determine their salary and service conditions. They will also be free to appoint faculty by invitation and give them differential salary and perks. At least half of the students admitted to these universities will have to be Indian citizens and the rest could be foreign. Thus the cap of additional 15 per cent of seats for foreign students set by the UGC will not be applicable to these universities.
Each university for innovation will establish a university endowment fund with such initial corpus as provided in the MoA. Therefore, different universities will have different initial corpus funds. These so called not-for-profit legal entities will not be under the purview of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG). They will appoint their own auditors. They will have all financial powers for acquiring and disposing properties. This provision gives indication that these universities will actually be profit-making entities.
EXEMTED FROM ACCOUNTABILITY
The universities for innovation would enjoy complete autonomy in the constitution of the board of governors, the members of which will be appointed or nominated as provided in the MoA. There will be no nominee of the government on the board of governors despite the fact that the central government will be funding them. However, at least one-third of its members will be from teachers or officers of the concerned university for innovation. The board of governors will have freedom to appoint academic board, schools of studies, etc.
While enjoying full autonomy --- academic, management and financial, these universities will have no accountability. They will have full freedom to determine and receive payment of fees and other charges for instruction and other services provided by them. The standards of teaching and research are expected to be higher than the minimum standards determined by the statutory regulatory body in the relevant field. Where no standards have been determined, the standards have to be equivalent or higher than the standards of the best international universities, about which nothing is provided in the bill.
Giving all information about standards and fee etc on the website is enough of their accountability. If any dispute arises between such a university and the statutory regulatory authority with regard to the standards, etc, it will be referred to a committee of three persons and not even to the much trumpeted educational tribunals. Such a committee will include one person each nominated by the concerned innovation university and statutory regulatory authority while the third person will be nominated by another innovation university. Thus the representatives from the innovation universities will be in a majority. The decision of the committee will be final and binding.
AUTONOMY OVER APPOINTMENTS
Apart from other functions, the board of governors will decide the annual budget estimates, qualifications and other eligibility criteria and the processes for appointment to the posts of vice chancellor, professors emeritus, professors, associate professors, assistant professors and other officers. The chancellor of each university for innovation will be appointed by the promoter. The board of governors will choose the vice chancellor who could even be a foreign academician.
The board of governors of any university for innovation shall have the autonomy to enact, by statutes, its own policy to attract the highly qualified and talented academics having sufficient teaching or research experience from any part of the country or abroad, and to offer them emoluments and perks commensurate with their standing. This will include appointment by invitation of any person to accept the post of professor or associate professor and appointment by invitation of any graduating student with high academic distinction demonstrating exceptional talent for research as assistant professor on any terms and conditions. However, such assistant professors cannot be more than 20 per cent of the total sanctioned posts of assistant professors.
PRIVATE VARSITIES FINANCED BY CENTRE
These universities will be exempt from reservation. However, the central government will give grants to each university for funding research, fellowships and scholarships for the socially and economically disadvantaged students. The central government’s public funding will be in the form of land, contributions to capital investment, grants for supporting research, and the promotion and development of higher education. The funding of universities of innovation by the central government will be the part of the MoA, as pointed out above.
These universities will be known as the institutions of national importance with full autonomy in all respects. These will be private universities financed by the central government. The central government will have neither general nor social control over them. The promoters will have their own agenda and vision, without any importance to national concerns. These universities will be for the elite and middle class of the country squeezing the requirements of higher education system in general and students in particular.
Each university will disclose to the central government about the new research leading to an intellectual property and apply for its protection. The government will pass on all profits or royalty earned to the university from such intellectual property, and it will be shared with the creator of the property.
These universities will give their annual reports to the board of governors only and not to the central government. There is no provision in the draft bill under which the central government can inspect the affairs and functioning of these universities.
PROMOTING COMMERCIALISATION
The wide-ranging freedom available to these universities, like differential salaries to teachers and fee and other charges, etc, will set an example for all other institutions of higher education in the country to demand such freedom. Such freedom will only help private promoters, companies and foreign universities seeking to take advantage of the provisions of this draft bill.
Before it is presented before both houses of the parliament, the central government will publish the MoA of a university of innovation in the official gazette to take effect. There are no provisions in the bill for regulation of its admission with regard to reservation, courses, fees, examinations, service conditions and appointments of the teaching and non-teaching staffs. There is no provision under which the central government or any regulatory authority can inspect the affairs of these universities. Thus the central government has neither general nor social control over these universities.
These universities will be outside the jurisdiction of the CAG. There will be no member of the central government on the board of governors. Any dispute between the statutory regulatory authority and the university of innovation in relation to standards only will be referred to a committee, not even to the proposed tribunals, the decision of which will be final and binding. There is no remedy proposed in the bill in relation to the disputes between students, teachers and other staff on the one hand and the universities of innovation on the other. Thus while funding these universities, the central government will have no control over them.
The ministry of human resource development (MHRD) has forgotten that great universities are not established; they grow to greatness. All universities are institutions for innovation. The government could only make some norms for world-class universities which could not be established overnight but evolve over time.
It appears that this draft bill provides an alternative route of the Foreign Educational Institutions (FEI) Bill 2010 to foreign universities and private players for establishing their campuses in India. They will not be required to acquire the discredited deemed universities status. This alternative route is going to give them greater power, freedom and prestige, with the removal of most of the restrictions that are proposed in the foreign educational institutions bill.
With the new agenda of the government in the name of expanding higher education and a series of bills, our higher education system is being thrown in to the hands of private players --- both local and foreign --- for the trade in and all-round privatisation and commercialisation of higher education. We have to force the government of India to protect education from these predators. For that purpose, let all the stakeholders, viz. students, teachers, non-teaching employees and officers of schools, colleges and universities, youth, parents, people’s science movement, etc converge in Delhi on December 2, 2010 to make the rally called by the national forum in defence of education a grand success.
Source: www.pd.cpim.org
Vol. XXXIV, No. 44, October 31, 2010
Sunday, October 31, 2010
THE UNIVERSITIES FOR INNOVATION BILL 2010: ALTERNATIVE ROUTE TO FOREIGN UNIVERSITIES - Vijender Sharma
Monday, October 25, 2010
Friday, October 22, 2010
SUPREME SACRIFICES OF MARTYRS BENEFIT THE POOREST OF THE POOR
IN a choked voice, young Ravi Kumar Singh narrates to us how his father was brutally hacked to death by landlord criminals as he was returning from a meeting. A few seconds later, his words become not only steady but are laced with determination: “I tell my uncles and others to work hard for the CPI (M) which is fighting for the poor. I also want to work to fulfil my father's dream”. This young boy is presently studying in IX class in Delhi, staying at his relatives house. He was in his native village, Sakhmohan, for Dusshera holidays when we met him.
Ravi Kumar's father, Virender Pratap Singh, was a member of the CPI (M) Samastipur district committee and elected mukhiya (president) of the block when he was killed by the landlord-criminal Tun Tun Singh's goons on May 16, 2008. Virender Singh was in the forefront of struggles led by the CPI (M), AIKS and AIAWU for distribution of land to the landless. So dear he was to the people of Sakhmohan and surrounding villages in the block that most people did not cook for two days following his death. Thousands of people turned out to pay homage to the martyred leader. The son wonders how such a nice person working for the benefit of the poor could be killed. He is trying to seek answers whenever he comes to the village during holidays by trying to know more about the work of his father and the Party to which he belonged.
This family played an important role in building the CPI (M) in these areas. Virender Pratap Singh's elder brother, Udayshankar Prasad Singh, was one of the key leaders of CPI (M) who fought against social and feudal oppression in Sakhmohan village. Along with others, he strengthened the Party in these areas by waging militant struggles against the landlords. In 1978 he was CPI (M) candidate in the panchayat elections along with two others in Narhan and Pathelia villages – all three villages being the strongholds of CPI (M) and being contested for the first time. Udayshankar Prasad was brutally killed by the landlords while campaigning in that election. Both the brothers were district committee members of the Party at the time of their death.
Not just from this family, 22 other CPI (M) leaders and activists have also been martyred so far in Samastipur district while waging land struggles, particularly after the Party launched the land struggle in a big way in 1993. Among them included CPI (M) state secretariat member and AIAWU state general secretary, Ramnath Mahato, killed in the same Sakhmohan village. Scores of others have been injured in this class struggle.
That such supreme sacrifices have not gone in vain was clear when we visited Gangouli village, around 6 km away from Sakhmohan. There was a cluster of around 40 thatched houses, each with a small courtyard in front and back. Living in these houses were the poorest of the poor. Most of them were Musahars, the most backward among dalits whose main source of living has been piggery. There were also Dushads, another dalit sub-caste, Yadavs and some other backward caste people. These downtrodden people built their modest huts on land wrested from the landlord Baleshwar Babu under the leadership of the CPI (M). Ramnath Mahato, Virender Pratap Singh and others stood with these poor when the landlords tried to reclaim the land.
Shyam Pari, a 50 year old dalit woman living in this cluster, said “We would have been ousted from here but for the strong support of the CPI (M). Once the landlord's people tried to burn our huts to evict us. They also resorted to firing in which one constable posted in the police picket in village died”.
Along with Shyam Pari, 1300 more such poor dalit and other downtrodden sections people have benefited in the form of house sites from the consistent land struggles waged by the CPI (M) in this region. This fact would definitely give satisfaction to young Ravi Kumar, who, while we were parting, had this advice to give to all CPI (M) members: “If you are in the CPI (M), work hard for the Party”.
N S Arjun from Samasthipur
Courtesy: www.pd.cpim.org
Vol. XXXIV, No. 43, October 24, 2010
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
COMMONWEALTH GAMES IN THE TIME OF DENGUE - Amit Sen Gupta
THERE are genuine reasons for the nation to exult as India showcased its capabilities through the truly spectacular opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Games in Delhi. A nation, reeling from the continuous disclosures of ineptitude and corruption in the run up to the Games, breathed a collective sigh of relief. There will be occasion later to make sense of why a country, supposedly poised to take its place among the most developed nations of the world, should have made such a complete mess of the preparations for the Games. Notwithstanding how many accolades the organisation of the Games are able to now garner, the fact remains that the Kalmadis and their ilk have not shamed themselves – they have shamed a proud country and its people. They have, through their acts, allowed the country to be subjected to ridicule, some of which were thinly veiled examples of persisting racist prejudices.
THE CLEANSING OF DELHI
This column, however, is not about the Commonwealth Games. It is about another Delhi – a city where people live, work and die. A city where the working people are expected to be used but not to be either seen or heard. For Delhi is a city where the poor have been banished to the periphery, so that the rich and the affluent are not faced with the moral dilemma of having to constantly contrast their plush lifestyles with those who make Delhi function. Mercifully, Mumbai, Kolkata or Chennai still do not offer them this option – the poor still retain some rights to share the same physical space as the sons and daughters of ‘Shining India’. But Delhi has been almost entirely cleansed of its poor – at least from places where the gaze of the rest of the world is likely to be focused. This started many years before the Games, beginning with the Emergency and then with the move to relocate industries and workers from the centre of the city. The Games has been but another excuse to further sanitise the city.
The grand facades that welcome visitors to the Games do not stand testimony to the efforts of the now completely discredited Organising Committee of the Games – they are a creation of the blood and sweat of tens of thousands of workers who were brought into the city to showcase modern India’s accomplishments. Curiously, it is these people who the Delhi Government is desperate to hide. The attempts at denying that poor working people actually constitute a majority of the city’s population would have been comic were it not for the tragedy that it hides. The past few weeks have witnessed frenzied attempts to drive away the poor in the few remaining pockets in the centre of the city, where they still lived. Newspapers have reported how the police and administration held out threats of dire consequences to force migrant workers – who built the Games infrastructure – to leave the city. Those who could not be driven out are hidden from view behind giant cutouts that welcome visitors to the city. The city seems to be under a virtual siege and bus services used by the working people to commute to the city centre have been withdrawn for reasons difficult to understand.
The poor are much more magnanimous than the rich and famous that they are forced to serve. They do not grudge the fact that a few shall have a place in the sun at their behest. They are proud to be Indians and want to see the nation of 1.2 billion people take its rightful place among the community of nations. They are even willing to overlook the severe disruptions in their daily lives caused by the conduct of the Games – for they do not have the luxury to go on an extended holiday as some of the rich and famous have declared their intentions to. All they however would like, is to be seen, and acknowledged, and heard. For they have stories to tell that completes the picture of the real India.
DENGUE EPIDEMIC IN DELHI
As the cacophony regarding the Games reaches a crescendo, something else -- that has affected the life of ordinary citizens in the city -- has been quietly buried. Few in the media even care to report any more that Delhi is experiencing one of the severest epidemics in recent decades. Talk to people in Delhi and everybody knows of some friend or relative who’s suffering from dengue fever. While official figures peg the number of cases of Dengue to about three thousand, the real numbers would be anything between 10-100 times that.
Dengue has been a constant companion of the citizens of Delhi. Every year, after the monsoon showers, Delhi welcomes the onset of a Dengue epidemic. We also know that the severe epidemics are seen in cycles of 3-4 years, ie, while every season sees a number of Dengue cases, there is a sharp spike every 3-4 years. There is a reason why this happens, but it has nothing, unfortunately, to do with any public health efforts by the Delhi government. Like all epidemics, the dengue epidemic starts slowing down when a sufficient number of people have been infected by the virus as those affected get immunity to the disease -- known as “herd immunity”. After a lapse of 3-4 years the effect of this herd immunity weakens and the epidemic is seen in a more severe form.
Dengue is a viral disease transmitted by mosquitoes. The reason why Dengue epidemics occur just after the rains is twofold. First, rainwater collection promotes mosquito breeding. Further, moderate temperatures in the monsoon season provides optimum conditions for both mosquitoes to breed and survive and for the virus to thrive. This is also why the epidemic starts petering out as winter sets in – Delhi’s harsh winter acting as a deterrent to both mosquito breeding and the transmission of the virus.
While in most people Dengue runs a relatively benign course, with a few days of fever and pains, in a small percent of those affected it can acquire a much more severe and life threatening form. In these patients there is a sudden drop in a kind of blood cells, called platelets that are vital for the clotting of blood. When the number of platelets fall below a certain level, the person affected can have spontaneous bleeding from different sites of the body. If not treated in a hospital setting such patients can die due to blood loss or other complications. This form of Dengue – called Dengue hemorrhagic fever – affects children and adolescents more than others, but other age groups can also be affected. The reason why Dengue patients have to be treated with extreme care is that there is no way to anticipate which of the infected patients will eventually get Dengue hemorrhagic fever. Consequently, all Dengue patients need to be observed carefully for symptoms of Dengue hemorrhagic to be expressed.
DELHI GOVT’S MASTERLY INACTIVITY
This is why a Dengue epidemic is a major public health problem. Unfortunately, the Delhi government has mastered a unique manner of addressing this problem – every Dengue season the government goes into a state of masterly inactivity! The reason for this lies in the almost total lack of a public health system in the city – not just health facilities but other public health measures such as mosquito control, sanitation, etc. Delhi’s health system, is afflicted with the same malaise that affects the entire country’s public health system. Every year, during the dengue season, we see ritual pronouncements about public health measures being undertaken such as spraying of mosquito repellants, and destruction of breeding sites. Clearly, such measures are far too inadequate. Moreover such measures do not have a major impact once an epidemic is established – they have to be continued throughout the year. Unfortunately every year is a new experience for the Delhi government, having learnt nothing from the experiences of previous years!
When an epidemic does get established, it is natural that a large number would be affected – not a few thousand as the government claims but tens of thousands. Again it is important to understand what the figures the Delhi government really means. There is no legal requirement to notify Dengue cases – so an overwhelming number of cases are never notified. This is especially so for the private sector, where a majority of Delhi’s citizens seek care, given the very poor state of public facilities. Second, Dengue can be conclusively diagnosed only through an expensive test for the antigen of the virus. A very large majority of people, who contract Dengue, are not tested for this antigen. In other words, the reported number of cases are those that by some miracle actually get reported. This failure is a failure of health surveillance – a necessary requirement for any epidemic control mechanism is a public health system.
The story does not end here. The Dengue season is a bonanza for the private health system. Private hospitals rake in huge amounts as people flock to these facilities, in the absence of public health services. Most of these facilities pump unnecessary drugs into Dengue patients though the disease runs its own course and does not respond to antibiotics. In a functioning health system almost all Dengue patients could be cared for at home under the care of a primary care physician. Those that would eventually require hospitalisation (a small fraction of all dengue patients) can be detected in time if they are monitored by the health system. In the absence of such a system incidence of expensive hospitalisation is much greater than what it should be.
Before we finish let us once again return to the Games. It is estimated that the total expenditure on the Games was twice that of the annual public expenditure on health in the entire country. We contrast these two figures, not as an argument for not organising the Games. But it is definitely an argument for balancing the need to showcase “shining India” with the need to address the needs of the real India! The Delhi government’s negligence of the Dengue epidemic is but a small example of the systematic and deliberate neglect of the needs of an overwhelming majority of people in this country.
Courtesy: www.pd.cpim.org
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Saturday, October 2, 2010
CASTE BIAS OF INDIA INC EXPOSED, WILL THE GOVERNMENT ACT? - G Mamatha
THE UPA-I government in its Common Minimum Programme in 2004 had promised to provide reservations for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in the private sector. Even after six years, it has failed to implement its promise, which betrays a lack of political will in providing social justice.
Last week, there were reports in the newspapers that the leaders of the corporate houses have categorically rejected the idea of reservations in the private sector and have conveyed the same to the prime minister’s office. The Indian Express dated September 27 carried a report under the heading, ‘India Inc to PMO: Can't Reserve Jobs, Hurts Merit,’ which said Corporate India, led by the presidents of the country’s three biggest industry lobbies, CII, FICCI and Assocham, have told the prime minister’s office that they will not be able to reserve five per cent jobs for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.
The corporate chiefs rejected the idea of reservations because they do not want any interference of the government in their affairs, including the hiring process and procedures. These champions of the neo-liberal policies want the government to abdicate all its responsibilities towards the people. But, they have no shame in demanding the government to act pro-actively in their favour, be it from rescuing them from the recent crisis, offering bail-out packages or doling out ‘incentives’!
The industrial houses that have immensely benefited from the 'reservations' provided to them in the name of protection by the government are arguing against reservations now. They do not think twice when demanding incentives and tax holidays in their competition with foreign players in the ‘market’ even in this era of ‘globalisation’. For them, this is the level playing field, but the same is not true for the unprivileged sections of our society who genuinely need reservations and government support. Irony can never get better.
The corporate leaders say they will voluntarily do the needful for providing employment to the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes and they should not be bound by reservations. But, as various studies show, caste based discrimination exists in the private sector hiring process. The results of field experiments and studies published in Blocked by caste: Economic Discrimination in Modern India, edited by Sukhadeo Thorat and Katherine S Newman found that low caste applicants who are equally or better qualified than higher caste applicants are significantly less likely to pass through hiring screens among private employers in the modern formal sector in India. In an interview based study of human resource managers responsible for hiring practises in 25 Indian firms, it was found that managers bring to the hiring processes a set of stereotypes that makes it difficult for low caste applicants to succeed in the competition for jobs. They face attitudinal barriers that subject them to negative stereotypes that may overwhelm their formal accomplishments in the eyes of employers.
The study says, “The empirical evidence presented contends that discrimination is not merely a problem of the past or an incidental force creating inequality, but an active agent in the growing gaps between those at the top and those at the bottom of the Indian society. It unfolds the role that systemic discrimination plays to explain low and high caste gaps in educational attainment, occupational segregation, access to capital assets and employment, and income polarisation. It provides the evidence of discrimination – induced / linked deprivation and poverty of the excluded social groups.”
“People who hold privileged positions within large organisations develop a sense that a certain kind of person is especially effective in their roles, leading many managers to favour potential recruits who are socially similar to themselves, a process that has termed been termed as ‘homosocial reproduction’. Conversely, employers hold stereotypes about certain out-groups as being unsuitable for an employment…. A person’s social networks prove important for finding jobs at the professional end and at a blue-collar end of the labour market, because social networks often run along status group lines, sponsoring people who are like us.” Therefore, unless it is legally enacted to provide job reservations for the SC/STs in the private sector, no matter what the good intentions and voluntary efforts are, they will not actually be implemented in practise.
The corporate leaders while refusing to implementing reservations have also spelt out that these would effect competitiveness and endanger merit. As pointed out in the earlier study, “The belief in merit is only sometimes accompanied by a truly ‘caste blind’ orientation. Instead, we see the commitment to merit voiced alongside convictions that merit is distributed by caste or region, and, hence, the qualities of individuals fade from view, replaced by stereotypes that, at best, will make it harder for a highly qualified low-caste job applicant to gain recognition for his/her skills and accomplishments. At worst, they will be excluded simply by virtue of birthright. Under these circumstances, one must take the profession of deep belief in meritocracy with a heavy dose of salt.”
It suggested that anti-discrimination law is required to insist on the actual implementation of caste-blind policies of meritocratic hiring and question the common and accepted practices of assessing family background as a hiring qualification, for it may amount to another way of discovering caste.
The study also questions how merit is produced in the first place. It says, “The distribution of credentials, particularly in the form of education, is hardly a function of individual talent alone. It reflects differential investment in public schools, health care, nutrition, and the like. Institutional discrimination of this kind sets up millions of low-caste Indians for a lifetime of poverty and disadvantage. As long as the playing field is this tilted, there can be no real meaning to meritocracy conceived of as a fair tournament.”
Merit makes little sense in a society based on the inheritance of private property, and privilege related to birth. Logically, merit is at best a measure of an individual's movement from a given starting-point to an end-point within a definite trajectory. And as Lyndon Johnson, in a famous speech in 1965 that laid the foundations for the Affirmative Action in US says, “You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains, bring him to the starting line in a race and then say, 'you are free to compete with all others'. It is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates”, until the day that institutional investments are fairly distributed, policy alternatives will be needed to ensure the upliftment of the downtrodden and marginalised sections of our society.
It is noteworthy that many universities that are globally rated highly - and only two Indian institutions rank among the world's top 500, according to a Shanghai University survey - consciously promote a diverse mix of cultures, languages and social and ethnic backgrounds through aggressive affirmative action.. They admit students not because they are "bright", but because they are "interesting" and can contribute to diversity. Diversity has not lowered the ranks of Harvard, Oxford, the Sorbonne or London School of Economics. Thirty-seven per cent of Harvard's students are people of colour.
Therefore, India Inc must be made to realise that providing reservations to the marginalised sections will not hurt them, but on the contrary, will add to the enrichment of their work output and experience.
The UPA government makes a lot of noise about inclusive growth. It must realise that growth with inclusiveness requires a concerted effort, backed by legal protection against caste based discrimination in the form of law, and specific legal measures to implement reservations for the SC/STs in private sector and remove the barriers that prejudice generates on a daily basis for the majority of people in this country. These interim relief measures should be of course, followed by strengthening the public sector, ensuring job security and implementing land reforms.
Source: www.pd.cpim.org
Friday, October 1, 2010
MASS MEETING AT KAJORA, ANDAL
10TH OCTOBER, 2010
MASS MEETING AT KAJORA MELA MAIDAN, KAJORA UNDER PS ANDAL, BURDWAN AGAINST RISING PRICES, DISINVESTMENT IN PUBLIC SECTOR UNDERTAKINGS, PRIVATISATION OF COAL INDUSTRY, FOR REVIVAL OF SICK INDUSTRIES AND IN SUPPORT OF PUBLIC DISTRIBUTION SYSTEM
SPEAKERS: COM. BUDDHADEB BHATTACHARJEE, CHIEF MINISTER OF WEST BENGAL, COM. BANSA GOPAL CHOWDHURY, MP AND OTHERS
JOIN THE MEETING IN MILLIONS
