Five foreign countries viz. US, UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand has alerted its citizens against tour in India during the period October to January pointing to personal security in view of the terror attacks in the festival season. October to January is the peak season for tourists to India and this warning by foreign countries is goiin to adversely affect the tourist flow to India at this time. Whether the alert has been issued sincerely due to the chance for terror attacks or is a ploy to reduce the tour traffic to India in this peak season.

India is of course on the growth path! But the growth is limited to a minority of millionaires and billionaires. 90% people are not part of this big growth.
According to a report of the Credit Suisse Research Institute published, India has more than 2 lakh dollar millionaires now, which will be doubled to 403,000 by 2016. All these are having more than $ one million assets and the total come to $2.5 trillion.
At the same time, crores of people in India itself is living under Rs.32/ per day. The Planning Commission has shamelessly reduced the poverty line to Rs.26 in rural and Rs.32 in urban areas so as to deny any relief to these poorest section of people.
This Himalayan inequality is the creation of the neo-liberal policy being aggressively persued by the Government of India.This government has become insensitive to the poverty and sufferings of the poor in the country.
A strong movement is necessary to expose and defeat this anti-worker policies.

The consolidation in Telecom Services has started. Tatas have decided to merge all their telecom arms, Tata Teleservices, Tata Indicom etc. in to one brand under Tata DoCoMo. This will consolidate their CDMA, 3G, GSM and also Photon services. The major players have started their consolidation with a view to manage their finances and also to face the new situation in view of the NTP-2011.
BSNL is going to have a tough time with further competition.

With the Bengaluru Metro, Namma Metro, starting services from today 20th October,it will be a great relief to the people of the city. After the IT grand spread in this city and lakhs of IT professionals coming and adding to the population every year, the traffic was almost jammed completely in the morning and evening hours. Even to travel about 20-25 kms, one hour was not sufficient. Some of the big IT companies had shifted to the outskirts of the city to avoid traffic jam.
Whenever I went to Bengaluru, I experienced the same difficulties. Going to the Airport it takes more than one and half hours, which could be covered earlier by about 50 minutes. M.G.Road is almost blocked in the busy hours. Boards were erected on the roadsides advising the drivers to go through side roads to avoid traffic.
At present the metro is only for about 7 kms. but it may be extended shortly. I feel that once metro is fully operative, there will be some relief for the jammed traffic in Bangaluru.

The Communications and IT Ministry has released the Draft of the NTP 2011 last week. This is the third Telecom Policy. The first was the NTP-1994 and the second NTP -1999. Both policies gave a lot of benefits to the private telcos both in Licence Fee and other conditions. The third NTP, NTP-2011 is not different. The draft policy in available in the net. Everybody has the right to intimate their views in the matter to the ministry.
The CHQ of BSNLEU has already started this exercise seriously. And the suggestions/ amendments will be furnished to the Ministry. If any comrade has any important suggestion, it may be sent to the CHQ urgently.

The government is now thinking of closing the sick PSUs. It is part of the neo-liberal policies the government is aggressively implementing.
It is understood that the Department of Public Enterprises (DPE) has written to all the Ministries asking them to try revival of sick PSUs or close down them. The ministries are instructed to intimate whether the sick industry under their ministry is to be closed. It is also stated that the Prime Minister’s office also is involved in taking such a decision.
It is to be specially noted that the present Heavy Industries Minister Praful Patel under whom the PSUs are, while he was the Civil Aviation Minister has through his anti-PSU actions had made the Air India sick. Now he wants that all the sick PSUs be closed.
There are 38 PSUs, out of a total of about 240, which are sick. The government policy seems to be that through its policy decisions and actions make the PSU sick and then close it or hand over it to private companies at cheap rates.
The entire PSU workers have to unitedly oppose and defeat the government move to close down the PSUs.

An aspiration of the Telecom / BSNL Employees for long has been fulfilled today, 19th October. As per the decision of the Central Executive Committee of BSNL Employees Union, a Trust under the name of K.G.Bose Memorial Trust has been registered today at New Delhi. I am the Chairman, Com.P.Abhimanyu is the Managing Trustee and Coms. P.Asokababu, S.C.Bhattacharya, J.Sampat Rao, K.Mohanan and Animesh Mitra are the Trustees.
The Trust is formed with many objectives, mainly to propagate the great ideals of Comrade KG as also for trade union education. In addition it has also been decided by the CEC to purchase a building and name it as K.G.Bose Bhawan. The purchasing process is going on and we expect to inaugurate it on 11th December, the death anniversary of Comrade KG.

Team Anna seems to be under a physical attack for their fight against corruption.
Prashant Bhooshan was attacked last week in the Delhi court premises. Today, Arvind Kejrival has been attacked in a public meeting at Lucknow by a person hurling chappal at him.
This kind of attack has to be condemned by all. This will lead to a goonda raj.
Those who ae behind the attackers should be brought to book and punished.

Today, I met Shri K.Vallinayagam, General Secretary of FNTO at his office. It has been some time since we met.I intimated him about the JAC decision to go on one day strike on 15th November 2011 against VRS, curtailment of existing benefits, settlement of ITS absorption etc.and requested that FNTO also join the main stream of struggle. We discussed the issues in detail. Shri Valli told me that he will discuss with his office-bearers and intimate about their decision.

BSNL is in acute financial difficulties. In 2010-11, it has posted a loss of around Rs. 6,000 crore. At the same time, about Rs. 4,000 to 5,000 crore dues to BSNL are yet to be recovered from the customers. The dues have been increasing year by year. No serious action has been take to recover these increasing due for the last so many years. When the issue was raised in the Parliament through M.P.s, the reply given was that necessary actions are being taken by the BSNL management. But as per the latest reports the dues have only increased.
It is high time that the management takes immediate and strong actions to recover the pending dues.