The Self Help Group And Jeevika Sangharsh Samiti held a meeting on 6 April in Patna, attended by women from across the state.

Pricol workers in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu observed IWD 2017 as an occasion to reaffirm ten years of their struggle. On this occasion, AIPWA Secretary Kavita Krishnan felicitated six of the recently-acquitted Pricol workers, who declared their intention to hand over their earnings through jail labour as well as increased Diwali bonuses to the fund for freeing the two Pricol workers who are still in jail. Pricol’s women workers as well as women from the workers’ families remembered their struggles of the past ten years.

THE official Government ‘celebrations’ of International Women’s Day came a cropper in Bengaluru thanks to a powerful strike by the city Municipal Corporation’s contract sanitation workers (97% of whom are Dalit women). The BBMP (the local administrative body in Bangalore) had not paid the workers arrears from August 2016. After a series of protests, wages for the contracted powrakarmikas (corporation workers) had been revised from Rs 7000 in most wards to Rs 14000 through a government notification. However, the BBMP has continued to pay the former unrevised wages.

(Slightly expanded version of a piece in Wire.in)

 [The Law Commission has sought responses on a flawed and biased questionnaire on personal law reform. Several organizations and activists – including AIPWA – have sent a collective response (below) to the Law Commission.]

To,

Dr B S Chauhan,

Chairman,

Law Commission of India

Sub: Response to Appeal and Questionnaire released by the Law Commission of India on 07 Oct 2016

Dear Sir,

THE 7th AIPWA National Conference was held in Patna on 13-14 November 2016, at the Bharatiya Nritya Kala Mandir. The Conference called for women’s resistance to patriarchy and the growing fascist threat and intensified struggles to defend democracy and assert women’s freedom.

The Bharatiya Nritya Kala Mandir complex was named after Rama Gairola for the occasion in memory of departed young AIPWA leader Rama Gairola. The hall was named after noted writer and activist, the late Mahashweta Devi and the stage was named after AIPWA Founding President the late Comrade Geeta Das.

(The paper presented by Comrade Bhuvana at the WCWW will be published in Liberation in the January 2016 issue.)

In its 70th anniversary year, WFTU held the World Congress of Working Women in Cyprus on 2015, November 1 – 2. The congress was hosted by PanCyprian Federation of Labour (PEO) of Cyprus, a federation of 8 trade unions of the country.

73 delegates from 45 unions in 28 countries participated in the congress. From India 7 delegates of AICCTU, AITUC, CITU and AIBEA participated.

The organized and open attacks on Dalits and women in Shiromani Tola of Parbatta block in Khagariya district in Bihar on 27 July 2015 have exposed how both BJP and the ruling JDU have a nexus with perpetrators of caste and gender violence in Bihar.

Three Day Hunger Strike of Bihar Mid-day Meal Workers

There are about 2,28,000 rasoiyas (mid-day meal cooks) working to prepare midday meals in government schools in Bihar, most of them women. They, specially the women, responded very well to the attempts by the CPI-ML to organize them, and on 17 March they submitted a memo of 17 demands to the Chief Minister, the main demands being government employee status and increase of honorarium to 15,000 per month. On 17 May they organized a conference in Patna and formed the Bihar Rajya Vidyalaya Rasoiya Sangh affiliated to AICCTU.