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The erstwhile Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Commission was denounced by all shades of liberal opinion as an integral part of licence raj. However, despite the expressed intent of preventing monopolies, as the entity’s name suggested, India’s major corporate houses flourished as monopolies under its regime. Apparently, it restricted only new players to enter their preferred business, rather than obstructing the expansion of existing monopolies to expand into any sphere of activity at will.

In a feat of political compartmentalization with no domestic parallel, BJP has managed to sail through post-liberalisation India’s first recession year, the worst public health crisis since Independence, a protracted Chinese presence on the LAC and the largest farmer mobilisation in three decades. Despite the best attempts of BJP critics to connect these to governance failures, the party’s counter narrative was ready with simplistic responses.

New Delhi: Indian men and women's hockey team captains Manpreet Singh and Rani Rampaul have exuded confidence of winning a medal each at the Tokyo Olympics.

Bambolim, Goa: Odds favour Mumbai city as they take on Kerala Blasters in the first match of 2021 in the Hero Indian Super League at GMC Stadium, Bambolim here on Saturday.

Finally the Brexit deal has been approved by the UK House of Commons. The way the house proceeding was conducted amidst rebellion by a large section of the Labour MPs, it is certain that it would dominate the political discourse of the UK for long.

It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. It was an unprecedented effort to save the world’s largest democracy from the clutches of what had become the Leviathan of a selected few.

Well ahead of the Assam Assembly elections next year, the pre-poll campaign rhetoric exchanged between the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its bête noire the pro-minority All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF) is turning increasingly vicious. The situation has worsened after serious charges about the AIUDF leader, MP Mr. Badruddin Ajmal’s NGOs receiving Islamic terror funds, were made public.

India saw in 2021 at 12 am last night. This morning came the CNN message in the inbox “Brighter days are coming...” Yeah, well, hope so. For CNN, at least, after being battered with charges of “fake news” and other disparaging Trump-coinage for four unstoppable long years.

The kisans gathered around the Delhi border have unerringly put their fingers on the real issue confronting them, namely their very survival as peasants. Till now there was an arrangement in the country which, though crumbling under the impact of neo-liberalism, still kept the peasantry alive. The three laws brought in by the Modi government are meant to remove this life-line altogether. These three laws thus carry the neo-liberal agenda in this sphere to its limit. This is also why there can be no meeting ground between the protesting kisans and the government, within the ambit of these laws; they simply have to be repealed.

As the year 2021 begins leaving behind 2020 — the year battered world over by Covid pandemic, the left and the democratic forces of India declare that our struggle for a new India where the dreams of freedom are fulfilled, would continue. In New Year 2021, naturally we look back to the previous year when we had experienced something unusual in the history of humankind. Though bitter and long-lasting, it underlined the fact that the human race would always be able to overcome the odds with the support of science and feeling of oneness.