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India has a great friend in UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, who has on a number of occasions held India back from the brink of war with arch enemy Pakistan, thus saving India from total annihilation. This time, too, Guterres has asked both India and Pakistan to exercise “maximum restraint”. The UN Chief seems to be telling India "we read you loud and clear", the Pahalgam massacre happened but rein in the oats!

Following the shocks of the last five years, global fragility remains at a near-record high level. The diversity of fragility profiles, according to the States of Fragility 2025 report, across all contexts is striking. About 2.1 billion people, or 25 per cent of the world’s population are living in context with high and extreme fragility in 2025. This figure is projected to grown to 2.3 billion by 2030 and 3.2 billion by 2050.

Donald Trump got a jolt in the latest national elections in Canada and Australia, but in Europe, pro-Trump George Simion, the leader of the far right alliance AUR won in the first round of Romanian Presidential elections held on Sunday May 4 getting 40.5 per cent of the votes as against the second placed Bucharest Mayor Nicusor Dan who got 20.89 per cent. The third candidate, the ruling coalition’s Crin Antonsu got 20.34 per cent. Simion will now be fighting against Nicusor Dan in the final round of elections scheduled for May 18.

KOLKATA: Not too long ago, BJP-led NDA government at the Centre was vehemently opposed to caste census. But in a dramatic policy reversal, the dispensation led by Narendra Modi has given its nod to it.

Conservatives have been the biggest loser in the local council elections in Britain held on last Thursday but it is the looming threat perception of ultra-rightist forces taking control of the destiny of the Britons that has forced the Labour leaders and its cadres to rebel against their leader Prime Minister Keir Starmer and seek his removal from the office.

BHOPAL: While the Madhya Pradesh Congress is making all out efforts to strengthen party organization, the state government is facing serious financial crisis. The Congress has decided to hold a huge party conclave at Jabalpur. Jabalpur has a history. It was here that during freedom struggle at an annual meet of the party in which Subhash Bose defeated Dr. Pattabhi Sitaramayya. Mahatma Gandhi said his defeat is my defeat.

Amazing are the ways of the Indian government and the country’s political satraps to deal with frequent Islamist terror attacks on India’s innocent citizens. In the last one month or so, the organized Islamist terror in West Bengal’s Muslim-majority Murshidabad district had led to massive destruction and displacement of over 150 Hindu families. Within weeks of the incident came the attack on scores of innocent tourists at picturesque Pahalgam in the Muslim-dominated state of Kashmir (J&K) in another far corner of the country. The trousers of around 20 victims of the dastardly Pahalgam attack - all males – were reportedly found unzipped or pulled down by the team of officials that carried out the first examination of the 26 lifeless, bullet-riddled bodies, in what is being seen as a confirmation that Islamist terrorists had established the faith of the tourists before killing them. These terrorists are not political militants. They are jihadists, or killers of Kafirs. No words are strong enough to condemn the abominable religion-centric cruelty.

Water can catch fire easily. When it comes to the Indus waters, we are seeing how combustible it could be —at least verbally for now.

KOLKATA: Karl Marx was born in Germany on May 5, 1818. He died in 1883 in London. India appeared in the writings of Marx and Engels over a period of about four decades: from the 1840s to the 1880s. The first reference to India — to the Indian gymnosophists, to be specific — appeared in Marx’s doctoral dissertation. The Indian caste system is mentioned in The German Ideology. The division of labour under the caste system is distinguished from division of labour in the modern workshop, in The Poverty of Philosophy.

There is a growing conflict and temple war in West Bengal surrounding the inauguration of the Jagannath temple in Digha, a significant event that opened on April 30 during the auspicious occasion of Akshaya Tritiya. The Bengal's Jagannath Dham mirrors the renowned Puri Jagannath Temple, and its inauguration by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is a strategic move in her political game.