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On January 1 2019, the Cuban people will celebrate the 60th anniversary of their revolution. Following years of struggle Cubans finally defeated the forces of the brutal dictator Fulgencia Batista and his backers in the United States. Yet as Fidel Castro famously predicted the United States would never cease in its efforts to destroy the revolution.

In a closely contested election it is not often that both winners and the runners-up end up celebrating the results. Curiously, that is precisely what happened in the recently concluded Assam panchayat elections. Leaders of both BJP and Congress had their reasons to cheer as the results were announced a few days ago.

BHOPAL: Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Kamal Nath has accomplished a Herculean task. Although in theory the chief minister alone has the prerogative about the formation of the ministry, the ground reality is totally different. The chief minister has to play a delicate balancing act and by and large he has performed very well.

China has suffered two major diplomatic setbacks in Asia within the span of one month. The first was its failure to get its protégé Mahinda Rajapaksa appointed as Prime Minister of Sri Lanka. The second was the defeat of its friend Abdulla Yameen in the presidential election of Maldives at the hands of Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, a close friend of India.

A C-Voter-Republic TV ‘National Survey’, released a couple of days ago, gives the Mahagathbandhan 50 Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh, if ‘elections are held today.’ There is a caveat: There should be a MGB. Well, MGB did not come gift-wrapped this Xmas, and is not likely to arrive as a New Year package, primarily because of characters like MK Stalin, who proclaimed Congress president Rahul Gandhi ‘PM face’ of the Opposition, aborting any chance Santa had of gift-wrapping MGB for GE 2019.

Monday morning, ‘yuvatis’ Kanaka Durga and Bindu tried their luck at breaching the Sabarimala male bastion and failed. Sunday it was Selvi Mano and her band of 10 Chennai girls. Mano – supporter and fan of ‘chapter-and-verse’ Zakir Naik – and her group were driven away by a horde of Ayyappa devotees in scenes straight out of Hollywood flicks ‘BC’ and ‘Ice Age’, their appearances a throwback to the first humans on the planet, nothing Navothana about them at all.

Unless K. Chandrashekhar Rao is playing the BJP’s game, as his critics suspect, his attempts to put together a non-Congress, non-BJP alliance do not make sense.

LUCKNOW: Congress leaders and workers led by UPCC president Raj Babbar are opposed to joining any alliance with SP and BSP for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Senior leaders have appraised the party high command of their feelings and asked party leaders and workers to stay away from such alliances.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: It was theatre of the absurd at its worst at Sabarimala on Sunday, thanks to a government which seems to have no clue whatsoever on handling the volatile situation at the hill shrine when 11 women under the banner of Manithi, a progressive women’s forum, attempted to have darshan.

As the year 2018 comes to close, it is pertinent to look back and see how the year that was politically. It has been especially important as it taught a few lessons to the political parties of all shades. Till a few months ago, no one expressed doubts about Modi coming back to power in 2019 but now it is not a cakewalk. More importantly, the BJP juggernaut had been stopped during the year at least temporarily, giving a jolt to Modi government and his party. The BJP’s defeat in the year began first in Karnataka and then in December in Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh that is the bastion of the BJP. Modi is no longer invincible. The results in the Hindi heartland in December shows that the BJP could not escape anti-incumbency even in its bastions.