EMS centre in Bangalore inaugurated

‘Globalisation promoting use-and-throw culture : V S Achuthanandan

Kerala Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan on Monday expressed concern that the new economic policies of globalisation were promoting a “use-and-throw” culture with respect to hiring of employees for industries and the IT sector.

Speaking after inaugurating the EMS Bhavan built in honour of the legendary Communist leader and former Kerala Chief Minister E.M.S. Namboodiripad by the A.K. Gopalan Memorial Social Education Trust, in Bangalore, Mr. Achuthanandan said such policies had more influence in Bangalore which had a large number of industrial workforce and IT employees. He stressed the need for having permanent jobs and incentives instead of promoting use-and-throw culture. It was possible to strengthen the influence and scope of the Leftist progressive movements by campaigning against such new kind of exploitations, he noted. Referring to Karnataka, he said it was a State where religion, caste and identity politics were deeply rooted. EMS Bhavan Managing Trustee G.N. Nagaraj pointed out that the Bhavan was being inaugurated on Monday to mark the 101th birth anniversary of the late EMS. He said the Bhavan with an area of 6,000 square feet had been built at a cost of about Rs. 1 crore collected from the working class.

The main intention was to turn the Bhavan into a Study Centre for progressive social struggles and a training centre for activists of such movements. The Bhavan will also house a research centre in which the State's social, economical, political and cultural conditions will be studied in an unbiased manner.

CPI(M) State Secretary V.J.K. Nair, who is also honorary secretary of the trust, remarked that the Bhavan with its study and research centres would turn out to be a university for studying the condition of farmers, working class and oppressed sections.

Becoming VC in Karnataka is a tragedy: U R Ananthamurthy

“Becoming a vice-chancellor in any university in Karnataka now is a tragedy,” Jnanpith Award winner and former vice-chancellor U.R. Ananthamurthy remarked, hinting at increasing “political interference” and “lack of freedom” in the education sector.

Participating in a programme here on Monday to mark the inauguration of the EMS Bhavan, Prof. Murthy, who served as vice-chancellor of Mahatma Gandhi University in Kottayam in Kerala, recalled that none of the politicians interfered with his work. “I had total freedom. In fact, I had even gone to the extent of criticising some of the stands and ideological views of the Communist party there. But those leaders were open to such a dialogue. The maximum limit to which they went was to tell me that they like me, but not all my writings. This is a proof to show that it was possible to have a healthy dialogue there.” “In Karnataka, the situation is too bad,” he added

(Courtesy : The Hindu, Mangalorean.com)