CITU national meet to be held in December in Vizag
Speaking to media persons at the Alluru Vignana Kendram here on Sunday, CITU national treasurer Sai Babu said 1,300 delegates of the CITU will participate in the meeting. The policies of NDA are favouring the multi-national companies and corporates and the working class should unite to oppose them, he said.
Mr. Babu said that the CITU has been on the forefront of taking up issues concerning the working class and ongoing agitation against the proposed move to privatise Visakhapatnam Steel Plant (VSP) is an indication to it. He said the CITU has its presence across the nation and has opposed the anti-worker policies of the governments.
He appealed to the working class to make the proposed general strike on July 9 a success. He alleged that the sectors that contribute to the GDP of the country have been hit hard and lakhs of vacancies in railway and defence sectors are not being filled. He further alleged that some State governments are trying to implement the Labour Code which had not come into existence yet.
CITU State general secretary Ch. Narasing Rao said that the privatisation of VSP has been stopped because of the agitations of the CITU and the Centre is trying to suppress the agitation by appointing persons with RSS background as its CMD.
Meanwhile, the CITU appointed Ch Narasing Rao as the event invitation committee chairman and R.V.S. Kumar as general secretary and A.V. Nageswara Rao as the treasurer.
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Hindustan Times
5 hours ago
- Hindustan Times
Who gets to lift over 8,500 kg of glass? Kochi startup, trade union face off in 4-day deadlock
The heated standoff between two entrepreneurs and trade union workers in Kochi, which lasted over four days, ended last Friday, with CITU (Centre of Indian Trade Unions) allotting trained workers to unload construction material at the site. The deadlock between the Kochi startup and trade union workers began after heavy glass panels arrived at a construction site. The deadlock began last Tuesday after the trade union workers insisted on unloading toughened glass panels - over 100 panels, each weighing 85 kg - themselves despite being told that the fragile material required skilled handling using proper safety equipment. The incident gained traction after coverage by Malayalam media and after one of the interior firm's founders took to LinkedIn to highlight what he called the "hard truth about starting a business in Kerala". Speaking to Louis Issac, co-founder of Idea House Coworking, confirmed that the standoff with CITU workers has now been resolved and that they were charged ₹30,000 by the union for unloading and moving the material. "They only placed it in the 10-metre limit. From there we had to move it," Issac said. The issue sparked a discussion online, with many agreeing with the entrepreneurs' call for a more business-friendly environment in the state. The episode also brought back to light the issue of the banned "Nokku Kooli", a fee charged by trade union workers for the work either done by machine or others as their right. Nokku Kooli was banned in 2018 by the Left government but it is still prevalent in many parts of Kerala. "The government must either disband the union or provide them with proper technical and safety training. Otherwise, we will not cooperate," Issac told adding that a group of startup founders in Kerala has sought a meeting with Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan to put forth their demands. "If unresolved, we're planning a statewide entrepreneurs' rally," he said. Before the standoff was resolved, the police intervened and called both the workers and the entrepreneurs - Issac and his partner Anto Raffy - to the station for mediation. In June, a car dealership worker at Kochi died after being crushed by a Range Rover while the luxury car was being unloaded from a trailer reportedly by a trade union worker.
The Wire
8 hours ago
- The Wire
Why Hany Babu Writes From Prison
July 28, 2025 marks the fifth year of Babu's arrest. In the past five years, he has written several times to his wife, daughter and other family members. Hany Babu. In the background are excerpts from his letters. Photos: By arrangement. The best way to harm an academic is to simply lock them out of their computer and deny them access to their years of research. This is exactly what had happened to Hany Babu M.T, a professor at the Delhi University, when the Pune police had first raided his house on September 10, 2019. Ten months later, on July 28, 2020, Babu was arrested, as one of the 16 persons implicated in the Elgar Parishad case. July 28, 2025 marks the fifth year of Babu's arrest. In the past five years, he must have exchanged hundreds of letters with his wife, daughter and other family members. Babu's wife Jenny Rowena, also a professor at DU, and daughter Farzana are both Delhi-based, and letters have been their primary mode of staying in touch, alongside bimonthly court visits and phone calls. Babu, who is lodged in Taloja Central jail, and is awaiting release on bail, reflects on some concerns in the letters he has exchanged with his family. Earlier this month, the Supreme Court allowed Babu to approach either the trial or the high court for bail. 'My academic writings and research were almost wiped clean when the Pune police came and took away my electronic devices,' he narrates in one such letter written to his family. The police took the passwords of all his emails, cloud (virtual storage) accounts, and shut him out from all his accounts, making all the data and research works inaccessible to him. 'I remember how difficult it was even to teach without access to all the notes and materials I had prepared,' Babu recalls the pre- arrest days in one of his letters to his family. The time between the raid and the arrest, he writes, were only spent in the apprehension of incarceration and it took him a long long time before he could get back to academic activities. At Taloja, like most of his co-defendants in the Elgar Parishad case, Babu too has immersed himself in reading and writing. One of his articles on pre-trial detention, co-authored along with his co-defendant Surendra Gadling, was recently cited in one of the Bombay high court's orders. 'Quarantine' Babu's arrest was in the thick of the COVID-19 pandemic. By then, the case had already been transferred to the National Investigations Agency (NIA). As soon as he was sent to jail, he was shunned in a solitary cell as a way to 'quarantine' a new prisoner before moving into a regular barrack. For the first few days, he wrote that he had no access to books, pen and papers. And days later, when pen and paper were made available to him, he said his happiness knew no bounds. 'Writing, in a place like prison, is the only outlet you have at times,' he shares in one of his letters. For the first few days, his writings were all about his new experiences as an incarcerated person, the memories and, 'of course the letters', he says. During the pandemic, courts were the first ones to shut down and move to virtual mode. This also meant that the incarcerated persons were no longer being ferried to courts for regular hearings. Outside of the laborious jail visits, families would only meet their loved ones in court. The environment there would also be relatively relaxed. But the outbreak of the coronavirus changed this in 2020. 'In those days, letters sent weekly were the only way of communication. And the replies to those letters would reach only after a month,' he writes. 'When you interact with an average prisoner...' Although a teaching faculty in the English department of the Delhi University, Babu's interest in social justice has been evident through his writings. He spent a large part of his academic years studying the many ways in which the academic spaces kept Bahujan students away. In one of his letters, Babu recalls how he always had interest in law and human rights. And when he began his work for the defence committee set up for the release of his colleague G.N. Saibaba, his knowledge moved from the realm of books to the real. Babu was a part of the core team that was formed after Saibaba, a 90% disabled and wheelchair-bound academic, was arrested in 2014 under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA). In March 2024, Saibaba was finally released from jail but within months, he died of the many complications he had developed due to prolonged incarceration. Reflecting on his journey, first as a rights activist and now as an incarcerated person himself, Babu says that as a part of the defence committee, all his knowledge was 'bookish'. 'Of course, that knowledge helped, but prison experiences have given me lessons for a lifetime. Reading about looking at prisoners without being prejudiced by the crime that they are said to have committed is one thing, but when you interact with an average prisoner you understand how important it is to be able to look at people without being affected by their alleged crime,' he says in one of his letters. Also read: How Long Is Too Long for an Undertrial Prisoner To Be Detained? Prions, he says, have taught him to look at issues of law more from the perspective of those who are caught in its crosshairs. 'I have witnessed so many people getting acquitted after a long period of incarceration, sometimes after close to a decade or sometimes even more,' he writes. 'Hapless prisoners spending months or even years in prison even after being granted bail as they are unable to meet the bail conditions.' Equality before law and political prisoners He draws attention to the differential treatment meted to those belonging to the privileged class. Without naming, he refers to the 2020 case of TV anchor and editor Arnab Goswami's and how the prison staff had worked 'overtime' to ensure he was released the very same day as the Supreme Court's order. 'Sadly, such laws don't apply to everyone,' he writes in his letter. In one of his writings, he delves deeper into his understanding of the term political prisoners, which has come to be associated, especially in the mainstream discourse, with those arrested for their left leaning politics. 'Sometimes, I feel all prisoners are political prisoners at some level. If you think of it, it is the society that labels certain acts as 'crime',' he writes. He adds that, 'many of the so-called crimes are, in a sense, statements against the inequalities, oppression and discrimination in the society.' He talks of how often it is the 'powerless' who end up being on the 'wrong side of the law'. 'When you heard the stories of the police or even some lawyers behaving towards the prisoners, you would feel they are the bigger criminals, but they just happen to be on the side of the power,' in one of his letters, Babu writes. He refers to American Marxist and feminist political activist Angela Davis's powerful correlation between black slavery and incarceration. 'According to Angela Davis', he writes, 'as long as slavery was in place, prisons in America hardly had black persons. I think the same would have been true of the Dalits in India, if untouchability were still practiced.' He further writes that as long as our society practices discrimination and marginalisation on the basis of caste and religion, 'we will have our prisons filled with Dalits, Adivasis, Backward Classes and Muslims'. Prisons Prisons, he writes in one of his communications to the family, 'doesn't treat the inmates as humans or individuals, let alone as being capable of reading or writing'. Even a simple act of accessing the prison library, he writes, is viewed as a 'security threat' and therefore, unnecessary. Accessing reading material has been a struggle, he shares. 'But thanks to the collective effort of my co-defendants over the years, the prison administration has become more accommodative when it comes to books and reading materials, especially towards us,' he says. But for an average prisoner, the struggle still continues, according to him. Over the years, the government has started calling prisons a 'correctional facility'. 'But hardly anything is being done to achieve those aims,' he writes. The several educational courses run inside prison are 'farcical', he writes, citing examples of the digital photography course that he enrolled himself for. 'The instructor kept assuring us that we will be given the certificate and needn't worry about anything else.' Teaching English to other incarcerated persons, Babu writes, has been 'more of a learning experience for me about my inadequacy as an adult educator'. As an academic and a rights activist, Babu continues to write while in jail, but he also says that it comes from a place of complete awareness that 'one will be allowed to voice one's views only insofar as it is not too critical of the state.' 'But then, I don't know how much of that is not true of the 'free' world outside prison,' he thinks aloud. The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.
The Hindu
a day ago
- The Hindu
CITU plans to intensify agitations for achieving demands of workers
The CITU district committee has resolved to intensify the agitation for achieving the demands of workers of various sectors, particularly those from Visakhapatnam Steel Plant (VSP), scheme workers, implementation of minimum wages and revival of the old pension scheme. The two-day district conference of CITU concluded, here, on Sunday (July 27), where delegates reviewed the activities undertaken by the union in the last three years. Briefing media persons on the deliberations of the district meet, here on Monday (July 28), CITU district general secretary R. K. S.V. Kumar explained that the participants at the conference discussed the agitations undertaken during the period, including the ones taken up for protection of VSP and for reinstatement of contract workers, whose services were terminated, the Anganwadi workers strikes, which went on for 24 days, ASHA workers, Midday Meal workers, against privatisation of Golden Jubilee Hospital (GJH) of Visakhapatnam Port, for revival of the Building Construction Workers Welfare Board. The union had also fought for payment of ₹26,000 as minimum wage, provision of job security, regularisation of contract and outsourcing workers, and a general strike was observed on July 9 demanding withdrawal of the four Labour Codes, which were detrimental to the interests of workers. The conference has resolved to intensify these agitations further for the achievement of the demands of the workers. The conference unanimously elected a new body with 26 executive members and another 106 council members. K.M. Srinivasa Rao and R. K. S. V. Kumar were elected as president and general secretary respectively, and Jyothi was elected treasurer. A district-level seminar on the demand for withdrawal of the proposal to install smart meters would be held at Alluri Vignana Kendram on July 29. A dharna would also be held at the AP EPDCL Office on the same day. The 18th national conference of CITU is scheduled to be organised for the first time in the city, on December 4. CITU secretaries P. Mani and K. Chandrasekhar were present at the press conference.
