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The sudden spurt in Covid cases across the country over the last two weeks threatens India’s prospect of an early economic recovery in the current fiscal. Only last month, several national and global institutions, including the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and Reserve Bank had projected a possible growth of India’s economy by 10-12.5 per cent. Unfortunately, the new wave of coronavirus threatens to spoil these hopeful projections. Will the economy again suffer the scourge of lockdowns, zonal containments, industrial closure, travel restrictions and commercial disruptions as it did last year?

Buenos Aires: Playing an all out attacking game, India chalked out a comprehensive 3-0 triumph over reigning Olympic champions Argentina in the second FIH Hockey Pro League in Buenos Aires last evening.

Buenos Aires: A penalty corner conversion by Harmanpreet Singh in the dying moments of the moments of the game enabled India to level the first leg of the FIH pro league against Olympic Champions Argentina 2-2 pushing the match into a penalty shootout.

There is a myth that Cricket in India gained popularity after it won the 1983 World Cup as the victory was directly beamed to the drawing rooms of millions of people back home and they felt elated and proud watching Kapil Dev and his men lording at Lords ,venue of many a humiliating defeats of their predecessor.

A year into his leadership, British Labour Party leader Keir Starmer has managed to defy the expectations of even his most ardent critics. When he was elected, polls found that he had broad levels of support across many demographics. In a relatively short period of time his Labour Party was neck and neck with the Tories in the polls. One year later, however, one in five Labour voters has an unfavorable view of Starmer. His net satisfaction rating among the general population is -9 percent.

Unlike most countries affected by a partial economic slowdown because of the ongoing Covid 19 pandemic, Bangladesh is not about to slow down its aggressive export drive. World Bank authorities during discussion a few days ago noted that during the past decade, India’s Eastern neighbour had increased its exports by 80 per cent. As for India, its export trade also made good progress during the first decade of the new millennium. Later however, the bigger economy went into a slowdown and the subsequent lockdown on account of the Corona virus pandemic made things further stalled recovery.

At first, it was an attempt by the BJP to malign the MVA Government soon after it emerged that then state Home Minister Anil Deshmukh had walked into a cul-de-sac. Suddenly, everybody on the run, caught in awkward situations including being hauled up in criminal cases, like our media man superman Arnab Goswami, could do an about-turn and take potshots at Uddhav Thackeray and his three-piece government.

One cannot reconcile with two opposite reports – one coming from both BJP and non-BJP ruled states about closures of and rationing in many inoculation centres due to insufficient supply of vaccines in time, and the other from the Centre as a claim of having no shortage of the same. In between the contradiction one needs to know what exactly is happening in the country, because the vaccine is the only hope, in successfully combating the corona wave which is at its worst now.

Tamil Nadu has a history of strong governments and powerful chief ministers: C Rajagopalachari, K Kamaraj, C N Annadurai, M Karunanidhi, M G Ramachandran and J Jayalalithaa. Few states have had a line-up of such chief ministers whose stature equalled that of prominent national figures. The one exception, until 2016, was M Bakthavasalam, who ruled for less than four years and presided over the demolition of the Congress in Tamil Nadu.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has declared that a second lockdown is no solution to the second wave of Covid infection, which is threatening to spread with a vengeance, because the economy cannot handle such an eventuality. So far so good.