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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.

It may appear to be odd that India’s nearly 150-million 60-plus-year old population, generally politically active though not always quite vocal, is among the country’s most neglected by the society and the government. There is no worthwhile social security for the aged. A small section live on their income from savings, a large part of which is routinely spent on doctors and medicines that come under no insurance cover. A still smaller section tries to live on their pensions. They are mostly retired public servants and teachers. Industrial pensions are small and generally fixed. The minimum pension for a retired industrial worker, fixed by the government, is farcically low at only Rs.1,000 per month. The census analysis puts the life expectancy, for those above 60 years, of an average remaining length of about 18 years (16.9 years for males and 19.0 for females) and for those at 70, it is less than 12 years (10.9 years for males and 12.3 for females). The crime against the old, often by their next-of-kins, and others, including servants, thieves and tenants, is continuously rising, mainly because of the social neglect.

BHOPAL: Even before his ministry is in place chief minister Kamal Nath has taken several important decisions. Besides waiving farmers’ loans, a massive bureaucratic shake up has been effected. Out of 52 district Collectors 24 have been given marching orders and many of them are believed to include officers suspected of rendering help to BJP candidates. The affected officials include 48 IAS officers.

Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, the Mexican General who led the siege of the Alamo in the 1830s, got hit by a cannon shell on his ankle, leading to the amputation of a leg, which he ordered buried with full military honours. He seems to be the inspiration of child-bearing women wanting to breach the male bastion of Sabarimala! The Alamo finally fell, but Texas remained with the Americans. There ought to be lesson in that for the barred women but they don’t seem to lack in determined guts a la Santa Anna!