In 2026, there have been massive uprisings globally against war and declining economic conditions, and India is no exception. The current round of mass demonstrations has shaken the country and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), led by Narendra Modi, to their core.

Global shortages in oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) have had a series of repercussions in India, heightening existing problems during this time. But, while the U.S. war on Iran has worsened conditions in India, the people in India are also struggling amid declining employment rates, austerity and political repression created directly by the BJP.

The effects in India of the U.S. war on Iran

During retaliatory strikes from Iran, Saudi Aramco was hit in Ras Tanura, and Qatar suspended LNG production. India imports around 60% of all its liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) from other countries, and a large proportion of these imports are from Qatar, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. As a result, India is now prioritizing domestic LPG usage, creating a shortage and skyrocketing prices for industries that need it.

88% of India’s oil is imported. Before the war, crude oil prices were $69 to $70 a barrel. After the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, world Brent Crude futures prices topped at over $120 a barrel. At the same time, the Indian Crude Oil Basket price hit an all-time high of $142.69 a barrel.

The rising price of crude oil has put tremendous pressure on India’s foreign reserves and balance of payments. It has also resulted in an increase in inflation and reduction in economic growth. The CAD (current account deficit) has increased tremendously, meaning India spends more on imports than it gains on exports. This has resulted in depreciation in value of the Indian rupee compared to the dollar; currently one U.S. dollar equals 97 rupees, an all-time high.

To counter the inflation, the Reserve Bank of India has increased interest rates on loans and reduced the supply of money, making it harder for ordinary citizens and businesses to acquire loans. This has reduced economic activity, such as industrial output and job creation, particularly in oil services, construction and retail businesses, leading to increased unemployment. Large sections of urban youth now face joblessness.

Internal policy failures, misleading data, corruption

India has nearly 400 million people aged 15–29, and millions graduate on a yearly basis with STEM degrees but are met with only tens of thousands of jobs. Despite being some of the most educated in the world, Indian youth face the crisis of unemployment.

Despite showing growth on paper, the Indian economy reveals conditions of stagflation caused by large-scale imports of fertilizer and energy import costs. Industrial growth has in fact stagnated, leading to reduced job creation. Wages have also not grown enough to counter inflation.

A large majority of India's workforce remains trapped in low-wage work. Internal migration for jobs remains high. Indian government policy has moved the country away from the kinds of manufacturing that employ millions of workers. India is also still largely agrarian, and the population of youth graduating from colleges cannot find non-agrarian jobs to meet their needs.

According to the BJP government, the overall unemployment rate is between 4.6 and 5.5%. However, several independent economists assert that the unemployment rate is being inaccurately reported, pointing to outdated definitions of what is considered employment as a source of the distorted figures.

Recent events that have sparked protests

One example of extreme competition in jobs and college placements is the National Eligibility- Entrance Test (NEET). Over 2 million students sat for this exam to get enrollment at medical colleges, out of which only 6% had placement. The NEET exam also saw a major paper leak scandal, resulting in the cancellation of the exam. The cancellation resulted in mass demonstrations by student protesters citing systemic failures in exam conduction, corruption and favoritism. Hundreds of thousands of protesters marched to the parliament building demanding the resignation of the education minister, Dharmendra Pradhan. Pradhan was finally forced to resign amid massive pressure.

The BJP, however, has no desire to give up power, and has instead manipulated the Indian constitution and haphazardly introduced bills and enforced them through various arms of the state. From the farmers bill, which tried to smash the power of peasant farmers, to labor codes designed to weaken union power, the BJP in the last decade has brought the lives of working people to ruin. They have incited religious riots, heightened caste tensions, and pitted tribal communities against each other all throughout India.

In October 2025, the BJP regime introduced the SIR (Special Intensive Revision) of electoral rolls through the election commission in a bid to retain and gain power in states where they historically had shortcomings. The SIR, alongside the Citizenship Amendment Bill in the past, was introduced to particularly target religious and caste minorities across India. The SIR came into effect in May 2026, leading to 130 million Indian citizens losing their voting rights. 9 million voters were affected by the SIR in West Bengal – a state where left parties were in power for 34 years – leading to a major electoral victory in that state for the BJP.

Since October 10, the deletion of voter rolls has resulted in massive protests in New Delhi and across the country, demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyaneshwar Kumar, with the protests being led by unions such as the CITU (Center for Indian Trade Unions), communist parties, and youth and student organizations. Millions of people in New Delhi gathered to demand justice and the resignation of the election commissioner, with several thousand people from nearby areas and neighboring states traveling via train.

The repression against protesters has been remarkably high. 41,000 security personnel and police were deployed at the Jantar Mantar protest site. Between 2000 and 7000 protesters were either detained or jailed. People arriving via train or flight were detained before they even reached the Jantar Mantar.

Entire central leadership bodies of communist parties have been detained or jailed. Telephone communications and the internet were jammed throughout the city of New Delhi. The Delhi police even removed Jantar Mantar’s status as an official protest site.

The repression, however, has not caused a reduction in the number of protest attendees, but instead resulted in an overwhelming upsurge.

The conditions in India are rapidly declining due to internal policy failure and external imperialist pressure from the U.S. and Europe. The worsening of conditions is resulting in a cascade of never-before-seen mass demonstrations. The BJP are clearly shaken and are clutching at straws, increasing repression to retain their power. The people, however, understand that the BJP will use every avenue to trample democratic rights, and that the only way things will change is action in the streets.

#International #India #Opinion #Commentary

Chicago, IL – On Wednesday, September 23, hundreds of people gathered at the Rafael Cintrón Ortiz Latino Cultural Center (LCC) at the University of Illinois at Chicago to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the cultural center. Founded on September 19, 1976, the LCC was the first cultural center at UIC and was named after a Puerto Rican professor, Rafael Cintrón Ortiz, who supported the just struggles of the student activists in the 1970s.

Just a few hours before the event began, Mexican Students de Aztlán (MeSA) led hundreds of students in successfully preventing the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol from attending a career fair hosted by UIC. Student activists, university faculty and staff, and community members filled the LCC. People socialized and shared food, listened to speeches from professors, alumni and cultural center staff, and ended the night by dancing to music by Chicago DJ duo TRQPiTECA and local student band Grupo Tercero. Months of work by cultural center staff, student interns and countless others made this lively celebration possible. Attendees remarked how emotional and empowered the event made them feel, and rightfully so.

Donald Trump’s racist and reactionary administration has come down hard on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in higher education. At many universities across the country, cultural centers have been downright closed or “consolidated,” that is, effectively shut down. To make matters worse, these decisions are often made by racist campus administrators without any warning to the staff and interns at said cultural centers, leaving them jobless. Such is the situation at Louisiana State University, for instance. But it would be a mistake to believe that these attacks on DEI are limited to places like the Black Belt South or Aztlán, where the national liberation struggles of the African-American and Chicano peoples for self-determination are respectively rooted.

In the Midwest, and in Black and brown working-class cities like Chicago, there have also been attacks on DEI. At universities like UIC, there is a long history of struggles for full equality for oppressed nationalities. The oppressed students and youth here have waged historic fights for recruitment programs, ethnic studies departments and cultural centers. And to this day, the struggle for full equality rages on. Student activist groups such as New Students for a Democratic Society at UIC have been waging a struggle to defend and increase funding for the cultural centers on campus, successfully reversing a budget cut proposed by the university administration in 2025.

Jorge Mena Robles, a former student activist with the Immigrant Youth Justice League at UIC and current associate director of the LCC, took the stage. Mena Robles introduced the keynote speaker for the nighttime celebration, Dr. Lilia Fernandez.

Dr. Fernandez is a professor and director of Graduate Studies at UIC in the Department of History. She is a historian of the 20th-century United States and author of the seminal work Brown in the Windy City: Mexicans and Puerto Ricans in Postwar Chicago, and perhaps the best professor I’ve ever had at UIC. For this reason, I have received her permission to quote her at length in an attempt to highlight what I believe are some of the most important points that she raised during her keynote speech, which I believe highlight the historical significance of the LCC’s 50th anniversary.

“I'd like to start by acknowledging the many student activists who were here in the early 1970s, especially in 1973, who protested, occupied university hall, made demands for greater access to this university, and otherwise registered their dissent over how this institution explicitly excluded Mexican-Americans, Puerto Ricans and other students of color. They acted with courage and commitment at great risk to their personal well-being and their educational careers, and it's because of them that we are here today,” said Dr. Fernandez.

Fernandez continued, “Let me provide some further historical context about when the RCOLCC was first opened in 1976. The year before, the United States had finally abandoned the Vietnam War, after it had claimed the lives of so many of our community's young men. The Sears Tower, and in my book it will always be The Sears Tower, was shining anew, having only been built just three years prior. And to bring this closer to home, to make this more personal, I was just a preschooler at El Hogar Del Niño Daycare Center in Pilsen, for any of you who know it. A culturally conscious community institution that provided childcare for the neighborhood's working mothers. El Hogar Del Niño, just like El Centro De La Causa, Casa Aztlán, the Puerto Rican Cultural Center, the Segundo Ruiz Belvis Cultural Center, this cultural center, and so much else that we've enjoyed in our communities for decades, was the fruit of so much activist labor.”

Fernandez highlighted how much the university has changed in the past 50 years: “UIC was a very different place 50 years ago. Latino students were very few in number. They found themselves in a sea of predominantly white students, many of whom we should note, traced their own roots to working-class and immigrant families. But few of those white classmates came from the same neighborhoods or high schools, or shared the same cultural practices or traditions as Latino students. Back then, Latinos could experience outright hostility and antagonism for their mere presence here at Circle, as it was known. Not only from academics, who argued that minority students were intellectually inferior, but from others who thought that Latinos did not deserve access to higher education. A lot has changed in the past 50 years. Today, whether the university celebrates it or not, UIC is a Hispanic-Serving Institution, a federally designated Hispanic-Serving Institution.”

In reviewing UIC’s latest demographic statistics, Dr. Fernandez reminded Latino students of the power they hold at the university. She said, “In fall 2025, Latinos made up 36% of all UIC undergraduates, 42% of all incoming first-years, and 30% of all students in undergraduate, graduate and professional programs combined. Think about how far we've come in the last 50 years. Fifty years ago Latinos were less than 2% of students here. Today they are the largest ethnic group in this richly diverse, multi-racial community. And unlike days past, where the cultural center was the only refuge where Latino students might find one another, besides a dining hall table I've heard of in the student center back in the day. Today Latino students are visible everywhere on this campus. In fact, this university depends on Latino students. If all of them suddenly decided collectively to withdraw their tuition payments, their financial aid checks, their course registrations… If that were to happen, this university would face a major crisis.”

Dr. Fernandez also explained that many students and youth are dealing with intense “individualism, alienation, and isolation” and that cultural centers such as the LCC can help provide an antidote to these ills and serve as places “to build community, to come together, to learn from one another, face-to-face.” She reflected on the challenging times that we live in under Trump’s racist and reactionary administration, the need to oppose U.S. wars in Asia, Africa and the Americas, and the extreme wealth inequality in this country brought on by the accelerated decline of monopoly capitalism, referring to the times we live in as “The Gilded Age on steroids.”

Then, Dr. Fernandez posed important questions about the historical and contemporary visibility of Latinos in U.S. society. She said, “When people think about our contributions to this country, to this city, we are often celebrated for our arts and culture. That is wonderful. But I want to urge us to think about our culture critically. We're recognized for our colorful fiestas, our celebrations, and there's nothing inherently wrong with being artists or cultural workers. But what I see problematic is when we are reduced and restricted to only those roles. When we are seen strictly through that lens, as festive, happy people, performers, or entertainers, for an audience, perhaps. Then, I think we have a problem. Pigeonholing us in that way diminishes our whole humanity. What about our social, political, and economic contributions? For the enduring campaigns we've fought? For the blood, sweat, and tears we have shed?”

Finally, Dr. Fernandez ended her speech by speaking directly to the youth in attendance and saying, “I'm passionate about lifting up and highlighting our many forms of labor to claim our rightful place in this society, and I'm going to use my authority here as a professor right now to give you all some homework, students in particular, a challenge, perhaps.”

“Whenever you come to campus, I want you to ask yourselves: What are we doing here to advance justice? To bring about meaningful social-political change? To promote collective freedom? I encourage you to think about the LCC as a site of historical struggle, and a place to build on the legacy of those students and community members who fought for us to be able to enjoy it today. So I leave you with these two last questions: What will our legacy be? And how will we be remembered in 50 years? Thank you.”

Ángel Naranjos is a fourth-year student at UIC, a Latin American and Latino Studies major, and a leader of MeSA’s Education, Resistance, and Activism Committee.

#ChicagoIL #IL #OppressedNationalities #Commentary #Chicano #Latino #ImmigrantRights #ICE #UIC

As reported by Reuters, more than 180,000 people in San Juan and surrounding areas must face 48 hours without running water for every 48 hours with it. Although many officials in the U.S.’s colonial administration may want to refer to this crisis as an “act of God,” in reality, it is anything but. While the drought preceding this crisis had San Juan facing its driest July on record in 2026, it is not an isolated incident. It is simply the newest trigger-point for a much larger issue facing Puerto Rico that has gone on since the United States first began administering the island in 1898.

Just as water does not boil spontaneously, these conditions have not arrived as an “act of God.” They are the product of years of infrastructural neglect and an administration that is unaccountable to the people it serves. The “Superaqueduct” that supplies water to 15 municipalities in Puerto Rico was built in 2000, and as engineer Carlos Pesquera told El País, “it has no redundancy; if the pipe breaks, it broke.” Furthermore, millions of gallons of water have been lost to leaks— totaling $98 million worth, also per El País. These are not the signs of a well-funded or well-maintained system. Like a body without food, the water system has been starved of the critical resources necessary for functionality.

Notably, the people of Puerto Rico do not have control over how their resources are allocated. In 2016, the United States Congress established the Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico (colloquially known as La Junta), an unelected, U.S.-based board with veto power over Puerto Rico’s entire budget. La Junta has consistently barred local authorities from shifting public funds to pay for multi-million dollar infrastructure projects like renovating the Superaqueduct.

As a U.S. colony, Puerto Rico is not able to negotiate on anything even approaching an “equal footing” with federal agencies – with the Supreme Court ruling in 1901 that it was “foreign to the United States in a domestic sense.” Rather than being a part of the United States, they asserted that it was “owned by” the United States.

As the people of Puerto Rico have gone months without access to reliable water, the U.S. administration has carried on with locking any chances at a financial “lifeline” behind colonial red tape. Meanwhile, what has been approved are multi-billion dollar development projects that will only put more strain on the water infrastructure. As Marcos Quinones Otero reported in Claridad, “The Esencia Project in Cabo Rojo, with an estimated investment of over $2.6 billion, proposes intensive development precisely in a region that has faced drought conditions and water stress for years.” It is clear that the colonial overseers of Puerto Rico have their priorities entirely backwards.

These issues are not simply confined to the “ivory towers” of government and legal code. They have an actual human cost that has affected the lives of millions. As San Juan native and Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) member, Dani López, stated, “Before this rationing, San Juan had zero water for months.” They recalled that various areas of the city had vastly different experiences of the water crisis, saying, “We were in a somewhat middle-class area, and we were fine for most of the summer, meanwhile in other neighborhoods, they had water trucks coming every few days to bring the only ‘fresh’ water they had.”

It must be said, however, that the people of Puerto Rico are not giving in without a fight. On August 15, a protest took place at Puerto Rican Governor Jenniffer González-Colón’s 50th birthday fundraiser, and on August 23, hundreds marched in Cabo Rojo to demand the cancellation of the Esencia “mega-project.” At both protests, protesters demonstrated that they are fed up with the bureaucratic mishandling of their resources.

It bears repeating, then, that this was never an “act of God.” This summer’s water crisis is simply the newest weight that the U.S. empire has placed on the people of Puerto Rico— a people who are 128 years into a relationship that none of them chose. While U.S.-based developers are approved for projects like the Esencia with all deliberate speed, the island’s imperial oppressors move at a snail’s pace when it comes time to give the people who power Puerto Rico water to drink. And when local officials refuse to fight this oppression — when Puerto Ricans are under attack, they are certain to stand up and fight back!

#PuertoRico #OppressedNationalities #Environment #WaterCrisis #International #Commentary #Editorial

The prompt was specifically to ask about a change from the current five-day, eight-hours-per-day work week to a four-day, ten-hours-per-day model. The texts did not specify who had sent out the mass communication – the United States Postal Service (USPS), the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC), or perhaps some combination of the two? Some letter carriers said they were not sure if the communication was legitimate, fearing that it might be a scam message.

Then, at the beginning of June, the NALC held a special collective bargaining conference for Branch presidents in Washington, DC. The conference was meant to be a hush-hush affair, whereby sitting NALC President Brian Renfroe could discuss his approach to this round of negotiations coming off of one of the worst-bargained contracts in recent memory for city letter carriers, in 2025. It was during this year’s conference that Renfroe disclosed that the survey was his creation, and that the proposal had come directly from him.

Now, on the surface, such a change may seem harmless enough. One less day of work per week, while still accumulating the same number of hours, ultimately means more uninterrupted free time. Sounds excellent! But, when considering some of the further ramifications this change would entail, it becomes clear just how disastrous of a proposal this would be for most city carriers, and how it only further serves to highlight the disastrous management-oriented tenure of President Renfroe.

30,000 lost routes, unsustainable workloads and dangerous conditions

Let’s start with perhaps the most glaring issue: the loss of city letter carrier jobs (and, as a consequence, NALC members). Currently, city carrier routes are intended to be completable within a regular eight-hour workday. This means that each route that exists should be designed to incorporate an area of addresses and a volume of mail that approximately adds up to eight hours of work. For anyone who actually carries mail, they'll know this often isn't the case, especially after the most recent round of route adjustments nationally, but that is supposed to be the standard.

What the change from an eight-hour day to a ten-hour one would mean, then, is a total recalibration of all routes in every station across the country to bring them in line with the new standard. But mail and addresses can’t be pulled out of a hat; they instead would likely come from slashing existing routes and redistributing the work. This would mean a loss of assignments and, consequently, a loss of jobs and members. Some estimates from opponents of this concept predict that more than 30,000 routes across the country would be eliminated. As is the case across most jobs and industries, it would be the lowest seniority carriers whose jobs would be cut first, an ironic reality given that the pool of carriers surveyed about the change overwhelmingly fit into this category.

Further, those carriers who work at stations gutted by the national route adjustments in the last year know that management’s system is not based in reality. They often add much more work to the remaining routes than can actually be achieved in eight hours, with some already taking ten or more hours. Any rational person should be able to conclude, then, that a change to a ten-hour standard would mean many routes with actual workloads reaching or exceeding 12 hours.

USPS management repeatedly demonstrates a lack of care for the safety and wellbeing of its letter carriers, and this situation would be further exacerbated by a ten-hour workday.

Letter carriers are constantly harassed by management, both on the workroom floor and out on delivery, about make-believe office leave times and so-called “stationary events” (i.e. when the USPS-provided scanner with GPS tracking capabilities indicates a carrier has been immobile for an extended period of time). When working in extreme weather such as blistering heat or sub-zero temperatures, management’