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“Jantar Mantar has been reclaimed! We have entered Jantar Mantar and now we are being detained! But this is a message to all of us young gen! We can do it!” said CJP’s chief spokesperson Saurav Das in a social media post after he was detained on Tuesday October 13. Delhi Police also detained along with him, CJP’s national spokesperson Ashutosh Ranka, who asked the Modi government, “Hands off Jantar Mantar”. CJP’s Ajinkya Shinde was also detained. The founder of CJP Abhijeet Dipke claimed that party members carrying the national flag sneaked into Jantar Mantar and said in a post, “You cannot denotify the resistance, Narendra Modi.”

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: In a welcome show of unanimity, the ruling United Democratic Front (UDF) and the Opposition Left Democratic Front (LDF) joined hands in the State Assembly to seek the removal of Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Gyanesh Kumar.

WASHINGTON: In the volatile intersection of energy economics, electoral politics and international diplomacy, Donald Trump has once again demonstrated his preference for dramatic declarations over painstaking negotiation. His latest initiative—to facilitate Russian diesel supplies, relax sanctions on Russian fuel and announce an immediate energy ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine—may offer a temporary political talking point. It does not yet constitute a credible strategy for ending Europe’s bloodiest war in generations.

NEW YORK: With three weeks to go before America's November 3 midterm elections, President Donald Trump faces a political test that could reshape the final two years of his presidency. Falling approval ratings, persistent economic anxiety, an increasingly unpopular war with Iran and uncertainty over Republican candidates have created a difficult environment for the White House.

Saudi Arabia’s renewed confrontation with Yemen’s Houthis exposes the limits of air power against a resilient movement rooted in local politics, terrain and ideology. Led by Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, the group can threaten airports and shipping at relatively low cost, leaving Riyadh to weigh retaliation against escalation, civilian harm and another open-ended war.

PARIS: The school student protest here in France, whose epicentre is the region’s second-largest and most diverse city, Saint Denis, is every day gathering steam and sometimes forcing the Western corporate media to course correct after their initial slandering of the event.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is in a big dilemma on what to do with the issue of dealing with the demand by the entire opposition for the resignation of the Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. The present situation is volatile and it has the potential of going far beyond the demand for CEC’s ouster but also include resignation of the Home Minister Amit Shah who is the real man behind the decisions on imposing virtual lock down in Delhi and suppression of peaceful protesters in the national capital zone.

It is a matter of concern that India is way behind the countries such as Iran, China, Russia, Ukraine and even the United States in the area of mass production of cheap, one-way attack (OWA) loitering drones while indulging in the import of high-cost traditional aerial arms to meet its defence needs. Historically, India has remained one of the world’s biggest arms importers, substantially for aerial strikes, even as modern combat increasingly relies on low-cost unmanned aerial systems (UAS). The country’s powerful arms import lobby seems to have a vice-like grip over the national government irrespective of the party or political combination in power. A persistent bias toward imports remains embedded in the procurement machinery although the official policy trajectory in recent years has been leaning toward building strategic autonomy and cutting down foreign mediation.

A truly effective politician values long-term political influence and a lasting impact. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi also shares this understanding after many ups and downs.

Antonio Gramsci in his Prison Notebooks (written between 1929 and 1935) explains how a ruling class maintains power not through military or physical force (coercion), but through ideology, culture, and consent (hegemony). He argued that the capitalist state is divided into two spheres: political society (which uses force, like the police and legal system) and civil society (which uses persuasion, like schools, media, churches, and family). The ruling class uses civil society to project its own worldview as the "common sense" of all society. Because subordinate classes accept this bourgeois worldview as natural and universal, they willingly cooperate.