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On completion of the first year of the second term of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s NDA Union Government on May 30, 2020, the country witnessed Hitlerian Blitzkrieg strategy, inflicting collateral damages on millions of migrant labourers and general citizenry, slum dwellers and workers leaving them in lurch walking, barefooted with blistered sole, dehydrating, hungry, starving, gasping for breath and left uncared for to die. Many, indeed, died in road accidents and collapsed while walking, about 600 of them based on the data collated by NGOs and civil society, giving impression that country has had no place for the poor.

A lot of hope—and rightly so—is being placed in what a post-Trump country and world might look like. And yes, almost anything would be better. (As a popular lawn sign reads, “2020: Any Functioning Adult.”) Proposals for union-friendly organizing rights, student debt relief, a wealth tax, a green infrastructure bill (if not a Green New Deal), a rejoining of the Paris Climate Accord undertaken by a new administration would allow most everyone to breathe a sigh of relief. And breathing, in light of the almost 100,000 dead in this COVID-19 crisis, is not a thing to be taken for granted.

The Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati is known in Uttar Pradesh for her unpredictable twists and turns in choosing her allies. For her, survival in the continuing flux in the political situation of the largest populated state of the country is the core issue and she has decided during pandemic that the Congress organisation spearheaded by Priyanka Gandhi is a bigger threat to BSP's political future in the state as compared to the BJP. Her public statement on the controversy of organising buses for the transport of migrant workers to UP is the latest example of her policy twist.

The Covid-19 death toll mounts worldwide and still there are people convinced they are home safe. The tens of thousands of migrant workers who returned to villages in India… Are they home safe? No, the coronavirus is not through, yet. Not in India, and not in Brazil, forget the USA. New Zealand is reportedly out of the woods and Slovenia says it’s done with the coronavirus. But a second flush is colouring the graph red in many countries even as the first one refuses to fade.

Prime Minister, Narendra Modi’s appreciation of Mamata Banerjee for making sincere endeavours to face the challenges of Amphan during his short aerial survey of the cyclone ravaged areas of the South 24 Paraganas notwithstanding, the leaders of his Bengal party unit have launched the worst nature of political demagogy against Mamata Banerjee and her government.

Every life lost by the migrant labour in the wake of the lockdown must be considered a martyrdom in the country’s defence against coronavirus. Their numbers must, therefore, be added to the figures strenuously doctored by the government machinery so as to make the total number of casualties due to the pandemic look less appalling.

Many political commentators viewed the 2014 election results, where BJP on its own secured a majority for the first time, as an aberration which wasn't going to be repeated again — or more correctly, a black swan event. However, all these theories were proven wrong when Indian voters elected Modi again in 2019 with a thumping majority more than that of 2014.

All of a sudden India’s border regions with China appear to be aflame.

The two judges of Gujarat High court have certainly risked their anger of the powers that be by comparing the situation prevailing in the state, post Corona pandemic, to the “sinking Titanic” and also by observing that condition of Ahmedabad Civil Hospital was pathetic and “is as good as a dungeon, maybe even worse than a dungeon”.

By attending the meeting of opposition leaders at the national level, Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray has formalized his breach with his former ally, the BJP, and become a part of the “secular” camp. The parleys with Sonia Gandhi, Sharad Pawar, H.D. Deve Gowda and 19 others on video came close on the heels of a call for imposing President’s rule in Maharashtra by the BJP M.P., Subramanian Swamy, and his warning to Thackeray that the NCP and Congress will “destroy” him.