Opinion Jobs in the city
With the Left governments in Kerala and West Bengal announcing urban employment guarantee schemes....
With the Left governments in Kerala and West Bengal announcing urban employment guarantee schemes,the CPM is now daring the UPA to extend its flagship rural employment guarantee programme to urban areas. It says that unless the Central government comes up with an employment guarantee scheme for urban areas,the UPAs illusory pursuit of inclusive growth will cease to have any meaning. It is up to the Central government to display its sincerity in upholding both the letter and spirit of this constitutional guarantee by extending the employment guarantee to the urban areas, says the lead editorial in party mouthpiece Peoples Democracy.
Adding some political punch,the editorial says the introduction of urban job guarantee by Left-ruled states comes at a time when the Centre has adopted a cruel trajectory of imposing unprecedented burdens on the poor through policies that are aimed at increasing the prices of all essential commodities.
Arresting logic
With its Bengal unit not playing ball,the CPM may have dropped the term jail bharo from its protest plan on April 8. It is saying that the lakhs of people would picket Central government offices and court arrest as part of the nation-wide protest against price rise.
The CPI,however,is sticking to the plan. The editorial in New Age underlines that the jail bharo campaign must be a real mass arrest programme. The fight against price rise could not be confined to opposition to certain decisions of the Union and state governments…It has to be intensified and enlarged as a fight against the very concept of economic neo-liberalism, it says.
Bitter medicine
In the light of the Medical Council of Indias attempts to bar doctors from receiving gifts and sponsorships from the industry and from promoting specific medicines,an article in Peoples Democracy says the MCI should be given statutory powers. It welcomes the MCIs decision to amend the Indian Medical Council Act to insert a code of conduct for doctors in their relationship with pharmaceutical companies,and plans to recommend a quantum of punishment for those who violate the new amendment.
Compiled by Manoj C.G.
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