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Israel’s next general election isn’t due until November 2019, but an early poll is virtually certain given the outbreak of now traditional mutually antagonistic willy-waving engaged in by would-be prime ministers in Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition. No election is complete without party leaders accusing each other of supposed “weakness” in dealings with the Palestinians and stressing their own uniquely tough qualities for the task.

Tony Maxwell, a retired African-American naval officer, was trying — without much success — to get his Jacksonville, Fla., neighbor to go with him to the mid-term election polls and vote. The young neighbor, a high-school dropout, had no interest in taking the ride. “Voting,” the young man declared, “doesn’t change anything.”

It defies all logic that in a country where burning an effigy of a political leader or official does not constitute a criminal offence, a simple protest by waving black flags leads to arrest and incarceration. Waving black flags is probably the most innocuous of all ways to express dissent in a democracy, but our police and the administrations seem to be in no mood to accept it as permissible behaviour. Hundreds of people are put behind bars almost daily for staging such protests and the security personnel often deal ruthlessly with the ‘offenders’ dragging them by their collar and assaulting before hauling them up in their fortified vehicles. The offenders are booked under various sections such as 143, 145, 147, 149, 151, 341, 504, 506, some of which are even non-bailable, although apparently none of them makes any reference to black flags.

2280 workers of Moser Baer in Noida were left in the lurch in October after the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) initiated liquidation procedure against the company. Though the company has not declared official closure, the workers are jobless as the company is not running due to sheer mismanagement. Thanks to the moratorium on any claims on the company under the overriding Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) during the liquidation process, the hapless workers cannot take recourse to normal legal channels to claim their wages even under Payment of Wages Act. Even seasoned labour law experts in Delhi are clueless about the fate of their jobs or how much of their dues they can recover.

What does about 72 per cent polling in Chhattisgarh indicate? This includes Maoist-infested areas. High percentage of voting is generally considered anti-establishment. Of other two Hindi speaking states—Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh—BJP’s chances seem to be better in Chhattisgarh. But at the end of polling, it doesn’t appear so. Raman Singh is a three-term chief minister and there is powerful anti-incumbency against him, besides charges of corruption. His hope that Ajit Jogi-Mayawati combine will divide Congress votes did not fructify. Reports say that Ajit Jogi-Mayawai combine has damaged both the BJP and the Congress.

Nayamuddin Sheikh had something “new” to offer to the CBI Court to nail BJP president Amit Shah to the fake encounter that killed bro Sohrabuddin Sheikh. Youngest of the Sheikh Brothers, Nayamuddin failed to deliver, turning hostile in court. Another brother Shahnawazuddin Sheikh too stood up with something “new” but was last minute thwarted. Shah also has former chief investigating officers of the CBI popping up in court to nail him, but with empty hands!

In all honesty, the Government of India should erect a Statue of John Allen Chau, taller than the Statue of Unity, a 1,000 meters out at sea from the North Sentinel Island shore to warn people to stay off the island where Chau took Jesus to and found death. Nobody plays games with the North Sentinel Border Control and gets away with it. Ask POTUS Donald Trump, he has stationed a fraction of the US Army at the ‘Southern Border’ to keep off miserable caravan cretins.

Political parties make several promises during the elections, but healthcare has always been on the back seat. This is, even though, large amount of budget of the household goes towards healthcare. Whereas poverty is a cause of poor health, healthcare expenditure itself leads to poverty. The National Health Policy document 2017 admits that nearly 6.3 crore people are pushed below poverty line every year because of out-of-pocket expenditure on health. Successive governments have failed to address this issue. Public spending on health remains hovering around 1% of the GDP. The central government spending on health is a meagre 0.26% of the GDP. This is too low in contrast to the spending by others nations. Brazil spends around 8.3 per cent, Russian Federation 7.1 per cent and South Africa around 8.8 per cent. Even the figures of SAARC countries are much better; Afghanistan spends 8.2 per cent, Maldives 13.7 per cent and Nepal 5.8 per cent.

As the agrarian crisis intensifies, unemployment keeps growing and education, with privatization, goes out of the limits of common masses, there are communities that were once dominant in agriculture and in politics due to their numerical strength, have been engaged in agitation demanding “Reservation”.

The AITUC was formed in 1920 in erstwhile Bombay during the British Raj. Prior to that the First World War had ended (1914-18) and the Indian working class had gathered some experience of united action (six days hartal for six years imprisonment of Tilak in 1908). There was also sprouting of local unions from Bombay to Calcutta to Madras presidencies (Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, Calcutta (1907), Kamgar Hitvardhak Sabha, Bombay (1910)). And the October Revolution of 1917 in Russia had raised the hopes of toilers world-wide.