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Diamond merchant and fugitive Nirav Modi is paying the price for acting the mob boss in London. He walked the streets of the city as if he owned the underground! Now, for that impertinence and for cocking a snook at Scotland Yard, he has been denied bail and will be confined to a cell to count bars till April 26.

The Bharatiya Janata Party has scaled up expectations in Kerala. From one seat to four! Thiruvananthapuram, Pathanamthita, Palakkad and Trichur. One to fall in the BDJS (Bharat Dharma Jana Sena) kitty; three in the BJP locker. Four from a state from where it could not open its account to date.

Anti-Romeo squads, formed soon after the current NDA Government in Uttar Pradesh took over in March 2017, ostensibly to protect the honour of women, has come to be viewed as a big nuisance verging on state terror to police the moral standards of the country’s youth. It comes on the heels of such squads having worked for years in the BJP ruled Gujarat, where it failed miserably following massive resistance and disenchantment of people. The state government, rather than sort out myriad problems facing the state, is stretching the police force to protect dignity of women to deflect from the basic issues confronting the people.

The Prime Minister Narendra Modi seems to be shifting the emphasis in his election campaign from the promise of rapid economic development to a highly militant approach to run down previous regimes and parties for their soft approach with neighbours. It may be in tune with the basic element of militancy in the Sangh approach. Yet the Sangh reach remained limited for nine decades of its teaching for the basic psyche of Indian mind is democratic in temper and tolerant by nature. Existence of several religions with their innumerable sects and sub sects for 2500 years does certify the basic Indian psyche.

The BJP this time is giving more attention and importance to the north-eastern States because it fears it may lose heavily in the Hindi heartland and the loss has to be made up by gains in West Bengal, Odisha and the north-east. But ironically in the north-east it is now battling against a problem which it has created for itself. This is the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016, which intends to give Indian citizenship to non-Muslims coming from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

United States of America’s third largest city will elect a new mayor April 2 when voters go to the polls to settle a runoff between Lori Lightfoot and Toni Preckwinkle. History will be made regardless of who wins. Voters will elect the city’s first African American woman mayor and if Lightfoot wins, its first LGBTQ mayor.

Pakistan has found nothing to indict Jaish-e-Muhammad in the Pulwama attack. The Pakistan foreign Office dismissed the 91-page dossier submitted by India as not conclusive enough to indict Masood Azhar, labelling it a collection of “generalized allegations.” Should Pakistan’s summation surprise India or the world community? A useless question to ask. Pakistan chooses to live in blissful unawareness of the Jaish.

Two, or is it three fronts? Actually, not less than four. Maybe, even five. Each trying, working to precipitate events to change perception. That’s the word ‘precipitate’. Political parties and media believe precipitating events – real or unreal – is the key to fashioning and changing perception. It’s daily grind for both politicians and media to keep precipitating. Media call it ‘breaking news’, at least 10 breaking news an hour, which is what it takes to keep precipitating.

It is a perplexing contradiction. Anil Agarwal, the owner of Vedanta Group, symbolises the quintessential rags-to-riches story: starting as a petty scrap dealer with an investment of Rs.50,000 borrowed from Syndicate Bank in 1976, his Vedanta company has now emerged in four decades as the fifth largest mineral and metal empire in the world, valued at $10 billion. Even as he was riding the crest of a wave of success, the year 2018 turned out to be an annushorriblis for Anil Agarwal. Right when he was patting himself on the back for his Vedanta being the first ever Indian business group to get listed on the London Stock Exchange (LSE), the company was forced to delist after Vedanta came under a cloud for gross environmental and human rights violations, leading to the police firing in Tuticorin that killed 13 people.

As the campaigns for the European Parliament get underway, some of the traditional lines that formerly divided left, right, and center are shifting, making it harder to easily categorize political parties.