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Every consecutive week of May 2021 brought higher rate of unemployment and a great humanitarian crisis underneath. The situation has been going from bad to worse month after month which crossed the terrible double digit mark in the week ending May 21 when it was 10.3 per cent for a month, and 14.7 per cent for the week. It is abnormally high, similar to the situation in April-May 2020 when India was locked down putting brake to the economy at grinding halt pushing unemployment rate above 23 per cent.

Statecraft is broadly understood to be the art of governing and the conduct of national politics. It enjoins on the players a certain minimum standards in terms of probity, which is an essential requirement for an efficient and effective system of governance and socio-economic development of the country. Keeping this in mind, by no stretch of imagination can the Modi government’s late night order asking West Bengal chief secretary Alapan Bandyopadhyay to report to the Department of Personnel and Training under the PMO on May 31, giving the seniormost West Bengal bureaucrat barely three days to move lock, stock and barrel to Delhi. Not only that this is no statecraft, it is worse than witchcraft, which involves the use of magical powers to obtain desired results, whether fair or foul.

Mamata Banerjee’s political victory in the West Bengal elections is remarkably impressive. Here was a chief minister (CM) who successfully defied two-term anti-incumbency — and while there have been other CMs who have successfully returned to power for a third time (Narendra Modi is a prime example), Banerjee was facing the most formidable challenger in India’s political theatre.

With clouds of uncertainty over the NaMo regime due to determined opposition by the Sangh chief, the Indian politics seems to be like an open house. No one can predict the future course though many can aspire to have a deal because no one can predict the side for the camel will prefer to sprawl. Uncertainty hovers over the NaMo government as the Sangh chief Mohan Bhagwat has passed the public judgment of failure against the regime in fighting the corona pandemic.

New Delhi: Defending champion Amit Panghal and Olympian Shiv Thapa chalked out impressive wins over their rivals to move into the finals of their respective categories while two other Indians Vikas Krishan and Varinder Singh lost their semi final bouts at the ASBC Asian Boxing Championships in Dubai.

All publicity is good publicity—so goes the old marketing slogan. Is that why Ramdev courts controversy by laughing at Covid-19 victims gasping for air on his Astha channel? His attack on allopathic medicine as “stupid science” and false claims that “10,000 doctors have died” after two shots of the vaccine are recent ones.

As Covid-19 courses through India’s veins, the environment has become toxic. If it’s BJP versus Congress at one level, and it’s Modi Government versus Big Tech at another. The rightwing says Twitter is modern-day East India Company while the Delhi Police has the microblogging site in its crosshairs. The Chhattisgarh Police is gunning for the BJP meanwhile, and both the police forces are investigating what’s called the “toolkit case” even as the Covid-19 pandemic continues to vitiate the atmosphere amidst a severe shortage of Covid-19 vaccines, which in turn has led to a Centre versus states confrontation.

These two years since the ModiII government was re-elected saw the consolidation of the process, with renewed vigour, put in motions even years ago, post-2014 elections, of the realisation of the RSS project of converting India into their conception of a rabidly intolerant, theocratic, fascistic “Hindu Rashtra”. This was its declared objective on its founding in 1925. Savarkar’s coinage of “Hindutva” as a political project having nothing in common with Hindu religion that followed soon and the ideological construct along with an organizational structure to achieve this project advanced by Golwalkar in 1939 laid the foundations for this assault on the Indian Constitution, which is the very anti-thesis of the RSS’s project. This destruction of the secular democratic Republican Constitution acquired a frenzied pace since the 2019 elections.

Following its $1.9 trillion Ovid-relief package, the Biden administration has further announced an infrastructure package of $2.3 trillion. But in contrast to the former which is to be spent within months, the latter is to be spent over an eight-year period. And this package in turn is to be followed by a “human infrastructure” package. All this adds up to a massive stimulus for the economy as well asa massive redistributive programme, especially since the infrastructure package is proposed to be substantially financed through an increase in corporate tax rates. Donald Trump had reduced corporate tax rates in the USA from 35 per cent to 21 per cent, and Biden wants to raise the tax rate to 28 per cent, not immediately of course but over a period of time.

Unemployment stemming from the spread of covid infection is the cruellest part of the pandemic, apart from the deaths and suffering caused by the disease. World wide millions of people have already been pushed into poverty because of the lack of incomes and employment.