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The prime minister’s address to the nation has laid out a plan for completely rebooting India’s economic model in the context of the experience of the corona virus pandemic and the shape of the global economy that he possibly foresees.

A coalition of leading left wing intellectuals and political leaders led by Noam Chomsky, Bernie Sanders, Yanis Varoufakis and Naomi Klein officially launched on May 11 the Progressive International (PI) with the support of the Democracy of the Europe Movement 2025 and the Sanders Institute.

As COVID-19 maintains its devastating spread throughout the world, it has found an unlikely ally: The United States government.

Who runs the world? So goes Beyonce’s foot-stomping, adrenaline-raising battle-cry for women masquerading as a pop song. But with full deference to the queen, the question is not of who, but how we run the world?

The head of World Food Program David Beasley cautioned the UN Security Council last week of the hunger pandemic that the world was facing. He warned that this could push the global fraternity to “multiple famines of biblical proportions” within a few months if immediate action isn’t taken. What was most significant was he went upto predicting that at least three dozen countries would face acute famine.

While there was disappointment within the Congress party that interim president Sonia Gandhi was not very active and former chief Rahul Gandhi was indifferent to politics, the Covid-19 outbreak seems to have brought them back to the forefront again. Sonia and Rahul are proactive again, taking up the challenge against the coronavirus pandemic-induced political chaos. Their return to form has boosted the morale of the Congress workers who were previously rather demoralized.

By sealing its borders with West Bengal to prevent the spread of the corona virus pandemic, Assam has joined Bihar and Odisha, whose authorities had done so already.

The vitriolic campaign which the Union Home Minister Amit Shah has launched against Bengal chief minister, Mamata Banerjee and her Trinamool Congress government is part of his much bigger strategy to prove his invincibility for his party.

Central trade unions, including INTUC, AITUC, HMS, CITU, AIUTUC, TUCC, SEWA, AICCTU, LPF and UTUC, have penned a collective letter addressed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, urging him not to repeal the Repeal Inter State Migrant Workmen (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Services) Act 1979, and instead further strengthen it and see that it is enforced more strongly across the country. The central trade unions have highlighted the plight of migrant workers in various industries and services, both in unorganized and organized sector establishments, following almost 45 days of lockdown. The trade unions underline how “crores of workers, the most productive workforce contributing immensely to creation of wealth and GDP, have just been thrown into destitution being jobless, earning-less and even shelter-less non-entity. Utter inaction and failure of the governments and enforcement authorities concerned in discharging their statutory responsibilities in terms of the Inter State Migrant Workmen (Regulation of Employment and Conditions of Services) Act 1979 and also the directives/advisories issued by the Home Ministry and the Labour Ministry in the context of the Disaster Management Act has aggravated the situation further.”

Despite repeated demands by the states, the centre still has not released what is their legitimate due, namely the compensation for their revenue loss owing to the introduction of GST; this has not been paid since August. Meanwhile the Covid-19 pandemic, while adding to the responsibilities of the state governments, has dried up their revenues owing to the lockdown. The main sources of revenue now left to them, leaving aside GST, are taxes on petro-products and alcohol, and stamp duty. Since petro-product sales have plummeted during the lockdown, they can hardly hope to get anything from this source; likewise with all alcohol shops closed during the lockdown, the revenue from this course too has dried up completely. And since this period of social distancing is hardly the time for people to be buying or selling property, the revenue from stamp duty has vanished.