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Announcement of dates of elections to Himachal Pradesh State Assembly, skipping or deferring similar announcement of dates for Gujarat State Assembly elections, while revealing their simultaneous counting and declaration of results on December 18, 2017, by the Chief Election Commissioner(CEC), Achal Kumar Joti, on October 12, 2017 have raised public eye brows about fairness of the Election Commission of India (ECI) in ensuring level playing field between the ruling party (herein BJP) and its rivals and enforcing model code of conduct with equity, justice and fair-play.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Kerala is neither Uttar Pradesh nor Gujarat. That is the bitter lesson the BJP leaders who undertook a ‘Janaraksha Yatra’ in Kerala learnt the hard way.

The data-driven slugfest over the performance of the Modi government in the first three years between its loyalists, led by Narendra Modi himself, and detractors, both in the ruling party and Opposition, saw an important piece of statistics that should have pricked India’s collective conscience pass off as a non-event, except for some noise created in the social media. The data related to the ranking of India in the latest Global Hunger Index, released by the Washington-based International Nutrition Research Institute, which said that the country’s position slipped some 45 points in the space of three years to an embarrassing 100th place, behind Nepal, Myanmar, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. To rub sat into the wound, the review period corresponded to the first three years of the Modi government.

Political leaders after they retire from the high office they were holding, take to writing their biography or memoirs. There are some leaders who take to writing after they have fallen in bad times and see no ray of hope. Biographies and/or autobiographies of many of the top leaders reveal lot of unknown facts that eventually become part of history. Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Rajendra Prasad, among others, have written their autobiographies, and they are worth reading.

The internal struggle for control of the ruling camp may not be discernible from outside. It is not even palpable. However, a careful reading of the events’ connection with the Gujarat assembly elections is a clear give away of the internal struggle. There is no valid explanation for rushing the BJP chief ministers for campaign in Gujarat even before the Election Commission announced the election time table for the state. Visits of chief ministers were planned in anticipation of the announcement by the Election Commission. But announcement did not come for some obviously unexplained reasons.

Seeds of resentment against Indian National Congress were sown in South India much before Independence because of the so-called national party increasingly becoming a pro-cow belt party even though many leaders of national stature have emerged from South India. The pro-Hindi stance under the garb of nationalism in the BJP and periodically in the Congress had given birth to regionalism, which took roots first in South India.

Candidates allied with the left-wing government of President Nicolas Maduro won in 17 of Venezuela’s 23 states in regional elections on Sunday, October 15. Results in one state (Bolivar) have not been announced yet at writing. The turnout of eligible voters was 61.1 percent. The results indicate a recuperation of support for the government since its heavy loss in the legislative election of December 6, 2015.

Whether or not the death of an 11-year child because of hunger in Simdega district in Jharkhand has shaken the conscience of those at the helm of affairs is anybody's guess, but it has definitely reconfirmed the gravity of the situation of hunger in the country. That India has been pushed to the 100th rank in the Global Hunger Index 2017 released by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) is a cause of grave concern for our country. Our ranking is as low as Rwanda, a country which has been war stricken for several years leading to over a million deaths as a result of civil strife. We rank even below many of our neighbouring countries such as China at 29th rank, Nepal ranked at 72, Myanmar at 77, Sri Lank at 84 and Bangladesh at 88. According to IFPRI, India has “consistently fallen into the upper half of the serious hunger levels” category in the past few years. This situation needs urgent review because nutrition is directly related to the health status.

Certain changes are taking place in Nepal, both in its internal politics and in its external relations with China. For one thing, ever since the monarchy ended a decade ago in December 2007, Nepal has failed repeatedly to pass and implement a constitution. The latest constitution, adopted in September 2015, is still to be formally promulgated. Minister for Information and Communication Mohan Bahadur Basnet has gone on record saying the constitution will come into force only after the provincial and parliamentary elections to be held this November.

A series of unprecedented political and military developments are taking place in China contiguous to holding of the 19th Congress of the Communist Party of China which began on October 18. While the CPC is well set to mention President Xi Jinping as a mentor, an honour reserved so far for Communist stalwarts Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, this would be the first ever Congress which will have participation of military delegates on an unprecedented scale. Amazingly the former presidents, Jiang Zeming and Hu Jintao, who jointly ruled for two decades, have not been affirmed by name in the party constitution.