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THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The massive blaze in Kuwait which claimed the lives of 50 people, including 46 Indians, underlines the paramount need to ensure better living and working conditions for them in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries.

By agreeing on “equal partnership” formula, the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) allies – Congress, Shiv Sena (UBT), and NCP (Sharad Pawar) – in Maharashtra have taken a lead in preparation for the forthcoming Vidhan Sabha election likely to be held in October-November 2024. The opposition INDIA bloc will thus not only find more time to campaign for the elections but has also signalled the electorate that they are strongly united, while the ruling NDA combine in the state is still struggling to find out a seat sharing formula its allies – BJP, Shiv Sena (Shinde), and NCP (Ajit Pawar) – could agree on.

United States Vice President Kamala Harris admitted President Joe Biden could have won the CNN presidential debate on June 27. “Yes, there was a slow start,” she told a top CNN anchor. Yet Harris will not replace Biden on top of the Democratic ticket in case President Biden is persuaded to step off the presidential election stage. It was a possibility discussed widely post the disastrous Biden performance. The debate saw a fumbling Biden get hammered by a forceful Donald Trump.

LUCKNOW: Is BJP behind BSP supremo Mayawati's decision to bring back her nephew Akash Anand as national coordinator and her successor after the worst ever performance of the party in 2024 Lok Sabha polls? Mayawati removed Akash Anand from the post of national coordinator and her successor on May 7 when he launched scathing attack on BJP at an election meeting at Sitapur.

Union Cabinet in its first meeting of NDA 3.0 has announced new support (MSP) for 14 crops. The hike is very minimal and ranged between five to seven per cent (except for Niger and Ragi) and does not reflect the increased cost of cultivation. Severe losses suffered by BJP in recent fortunes in northern rural heartland indicate that the ruling party is fast losing ground among farming community due to its anti-farmer policies.

After a long gap of more than 50 years Bihar is once again witnessing emergence of class war though of not that magnitude and dimension that the state witnessed in early seventies. The basic character of upper caste oppression continues to be same as was evident in those days.

Poverty is taken to be a homogeneous phenomenon irrespective of the mode of production that is under consideration. Even reputed economists believe in this homogeneous conception of poverty. In fact, however, poverty under capitalism is entirely different from poverty in pre-capitalist times. Even if for statistical purposes poverty is defined as lack of access to a set of use-values that are essential for living irrespective of the mode of production, the fact remains that this lack is enmeshed under capitalism within a set of social relationships that are sui generis and different from earlier. Poverty under capitalism thus takes a specific form associated with insecurity and indignity that makes it particularly unbearable.

The summer heat has been so acute this year in India that more than 40,000 people have had heat strokes, and several hundred of them have died. In Delhi, water and electricity consumption has broken all previous records. Some reports suggest that the temperatures crossed 50 degrees centigrade in many places adjoining Delhi. In Bihar, school students fainted on their way to school. Some developed complications inside the school, forcing the government to announce an unscheduled school closure.

The formation of a Modi-led NDA coalition government has led to expectations in some circles that this will be a government which will face serious constraints in going ahead with the BJP/RSS’s authoritarian-communal-corporate agenda. Some of these expectations are exaggerated. The fact that the BJP has lost its majority and confined to 240 seats in the Lok Sabha may check or slow down certain aspects of the agenda which Modi and the RSS/BJP were aiming to implement in the third term of Modi’s rule.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi by accepting Narendra Modi’s nominee Om Birla as the Speaker of Lok Sabha without a division in the house on June 26 has not set a good example as the leader of the opposition in Lok Sabha in his first confrontation with the third time Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Rahul gave the impression of being a leader who believes in democratic functioning but his rival Modi has not changed, he remains stuck to his old authoritarian moorings. Rahul even did not try for a deal over deputy speakership for opposition while allowing Modi to nominate Om Birla as speaker for the second time.