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The GDP controversy has brought out all facets of truth: truth, half-truths and unstated half truths. To understand what has happened one has to refer to slide 7 of the presentation on the revised GDP figures that the CSO has released. Until 2011-12, GDP was calculated with reference to base at 2004-05.

The November 30 rally by India’s lakhs of farmers thronging New Delhi was unique in many respects. Unlike the earlier attempts at snatching national spotlight, the entire galaxy of opposition leaders—from Rahul Gandhi to Arvind Kejriwal, from Sitaram Yechury to Sudhakar Reddy and Dipankar Bhattacharya—addressed the massive crowd. The podium itself resembled a popular front against the BJP. The speeches were all primarily political and in sum it was a BJP hatao rally.

It is difficult to understand what the Chief of Staff of the Indian Army, General Bipin Rawat, means when he says that Pakistan must become secular if it want to come closer to India. His comment was in response to Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan’s observation that if Germany and France can stay together, why not India and Pakistan?

So, it wasn’t a never-ending tease? The BJP is done with the Sabarimala sannidanam and is all set to take the battle to the Secretariat, handicapped as it is with just a single face in the Kerala Assembly to make a stand, raise ruckus. The skirmish inside the assembly is between the LDF and UDF and the BJP is banking on Swami Ayyappa to change the composition of the House.

Modi came to power promising to eradicate black money and corruption by putting end to a system where the ruling elites and their cronies pocketed all the wealth while people struggled for survival. With only months to go for his term, whether it was the first only posterity will tell, he has become very much part of the system he was promising to fight. Today he is steeped in all the vices that he had accused the dynastic Congress of monopolising.

Gurdwara Kartarpur in Pakistan is one of the holiest shrine for the Sikh community. Situated in Narowal, not far from the Indian border, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan performed the ground breaking ceremony of a five- kilometer corridor that will connect the Shrine with Indian border. Expected to be completed before 550th birth centenary of Gurunanak in 2019, the corridor would enable Indian pilgrims to pay obeisance at the shrine, without a visa and return the same day. Currently, it needs a visa from Pakistan and a two-hour journey from Lahore to reach the Shrine.

Hidden in the caravan bungee-jumping into the United States from Mexico is HIV, respiratory diseases, chicken pox, hepatitis and tuberculosis with one-third of the “asylum-seekers” found infected with these ailments after tests done at Mexican border-city Tijauna. Being part of a large group helps camouflage such health issues, like a person who gets away with saying too much and the person listening unable to get the underlying underpinnings.

Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel returned to Havana November 15 after a multi-nation trip to Russia, North Korea, China, Vietnam, and Laos. He and his delegation had also stopped in Paris and London. In late September in New York, he had introduced himself to the world community at the United Nations General Assembly. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez was in Havana for talks on November 22-23.

India’s retail sector, cruising towards $1 trillion by 2020 growing annually at 20 per cent, is in for exciting times as consumers want “clean and swanky” stores, even as ecommerce and kirana stores grow side by side as they too have their utility and share of the pie.

The sheer audacity of Piyush Gupta’s ambition is astonishing. He is aspiring to create an eco-system which will transform the entire transport system of India by making EVs (electric vehicles) ubiquitous. That, he believes, should cut down India’s oil import bill by no less than $100 billion — his avowed target. Pray, how?