1. At WB, there were 179 strikes and 49 incidents of lockout in factories in 1965, in 1970, the comparative figures were 678 and 128.
2. The Philips head Frits Philips came to visit the Beliaghata factory and was not allowed to enter it by the Left union.He asked help from the state govt, who did not come to his aid. Overnight the Philips board decided to shift all their investments to other states from Kolkata
3. In 1978, BK Birla’s son, Aditya Birla, relocated to Mumbai. Apparently Aditya Birla was dragged out of his car near the GPO in Dalhousie Square, his clothes torn off, and made to walk to his office with the goons jeering him all the way.
4. The railways cut down orders, and companies dependent on IR orders such as Jessop & Company, Braithwaite, Burn & Company, Indian Standard Wagon, GKW and Metal Box were all affected.
Later Jessop, Braithwaite, Burn & Company and the Indian Standard Wagon were nationalised.
5. Lakshmipat Singhania set up Aluminium Corporation of India, India's first aluminium producer. One day, a works manager was thrashed by workers. The Left CM blamed the works manager. Workers switched off power supply to the smelters. In 1974, the company was nationalised.
6. After taking charge in March 1967, the United Front with CM Ajoy Mukherjee and Deputy CM Jyoti Basu issued a circular that the police would not be able to interfere in 'gheraos' unless it had the permission of the labour ministry.
7. This order resulted in a sharp increase in gheraos related to labour disputes. In March 1967 there were 32 gheraos, and by May 1967, there were 151 gheraos in West Bengal. They reached to 194 by Sept 1967. Fortunately, this useless govt was dismissed by the Centre in Nov 1967
8. One of the first 'Work from Home' was pioneered by the Birlas in 1970. The left wanted one umbrella union for all Birla companies, which was not possible. So, the Birlas decided to close down the offices, rented 32 flats and the babus started operating out of home for 2 years.
9. In Santaldih power station for instance, in 1979, the CITU workers prevented the engineers from repairing all the tubes of a boiler unit on the excuse that only one was leaking. "It is a conspiracy to undermine the left front government by shutting down the unit," they said
10. The infamous Ashok Kumar Night in Feb 1968. Women were reportedly dragged out, and their naked, dead bodies were found over the next two days. Left leaders addressed it as “the rise of the Proletariat against the Bourgeoisie”. The left rag Frontier Weekly watered it down ...
10. Jyothi Basu at the fag end may have feared his Maker said "Socialism is a far cry and we have not achieved it yet.We have to remember that we are working within the capitalist system and private capital has to be used for industrialization" A turn around after causing mayhem.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
In 2017, the NCERT had announced that they were reviewing textbooks, and had invited comments.
Had sampled the Class VII history book (Our Pasts - II) and had sent the following comments. The idea here is to show that each chapter had so many unanswered questions.
From Chapter - I, Tracing changes through a thousand years.
Amir Khusrau is taken as a knowledgable source about Sanskrit, and the term 'Hindustan' is used as a prop to elicit secular reactions.
Chap -2, New kings and kingdoms
We have, "As we will see, rulers also tried to demonstrate their power and resources by building large temples. So, when they attacked one another’s kingdoms, they often chose to target temples, which were sometimes extremely rich" in this chapter
IK Gujral, a card carrying communist during his college days had strong ties with the Soviet Union later.
This goat bearded skunk stopped RAW's covert activities in 1997. May he rot in hell.
Then you had the urine drinking Gandhian, Morarji Desai.
1977, Op Kahuta. A RAW agent got a hair sample from a saloon in Kahuta where Pak scientists went for haircuts. Tests revealed the hair had signs of high radiation and bomb-grade uranium.
RAW managed to get the blueprints of the Pak nuke plant, all they needed was to pay $10K. RAW needed the PM’s approval. Morarji Desai rejected the agency’s request.
The inventor of Morarji cola then indadvertedly shared the details gathered on Kahuta nuke facility with Zia.
The NDA govt led by ABV had taken over the office in Mar 1998. A month later, exactly 22 years ago, Chinese patrols intruded into Arunachal Pradesh.
The PLA Chief Gen Fu Quanyou was visiting India in May '98. Just a few days before his visit, Pak had test fired its IRBM Ghauri.
India's Raksha Mantri was the redoubtable Late George Fernandes. After Pak's test firing of Ghauri, he had famously declared that China was the mother of Ghauri and he raised the threat of a Chinese encirclement of India .
The agenda of Gen Fu's visit at this time, was probably to discuss the security issues and hinged on an assumption of that both India and China were seriously searching a path to resolve those differences.
1. Owaisi miyan ... where are you? Why are you not sitting with your sisters there? You don't want to be with the 'organic uprising' now? Or have you quarantined yourself now?
2. Old goat MSA. Are you in your Pak now, that you are unable to be with the Shaheenbagh protestors in the time of chinese virus?
The bubonic plague, trade routes and the industrial revolution, and the emergence of new world order.
Given this historical context, would the chinese virus pandemic lay the foundation for significant changes?
Excerpts from a variety of sources - scientific papers mostly.
1. Marco Polo through Asia along the Silk Road between 1271 and 1295.
He had undertaken voyages from Venice across the Mediterranean Sea, overland through Persia and Central Asia to the court of Kublai Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan and founder of the Yuan dynasty.
2. A diversion.
Kubla Khan is a poem written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge one night after he experienced an opium-influenced dream after reading a work describing Xanadu, the summer palace of the Mongol ruler and Emperor of China Kublai Khan.
The tale of the 5th #WuhanVirus case at Telangana.
1. A group of Indonesians arrived in New Delhi on Feb 22nd.
2. After staying for a few days a Delhi, they took a train to Karimnagar, about 170 km from Hyderabad to attend what is called an ‘ijtema’.
3. Wiki says that an 'Ijtema' is a two or three day congregation. The immediate concern of TJ is the moral reform of individuals and purification of the self, often described, as ‘making Muslims true Muslims’:
4. For example, the Tablighi Jamaat, a non-political global Sunni Islamic missionary movement which believes in the Deobandi School of thought and the Jamat-e-Hind another NGO conducts such Ijtemas.