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Europe is currently reliving through the painful memories of its history. More particularly, that part of its recent history in the first half of the twentieth century when two bloody wars had devastated the continent and decimated its population.

The constitutional coup – his critics say highly unconstitutional – that Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena sought to carry off by sacking Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and appointing Mahinda Rajapaksa in his place has landed him in a soup. Not only did Wickremesinghe challenge the President by telling him that under the constitution he was still the Prime Minister and would not vacate his official residence Temple Tree, Sirisena found to his dismay that his action had invited criticism of the U.S. and other Western countries.

Officials in the finance ministry may disagree, foreign portfolio investors may not be seeing India an attractive destination, at least for now. Overseas investors pulled out a massive Rs 38,900 crore (over $5 billion) from the capital markets, last month. It was the steepest outflow in nearly two years. In November 2016, FPIs had pulled out Rs 39,396 crore from the capital markets. The total outflow from the capital markets (equity and debt together) has reached over Rs 1 trillion so far, this year. FPIs are becoming increasingly cautious about the Indian market. It is not clear if this has anything to do also with the government’s bid to seize RBI’s key powers in the face of uncertain trade and economic developments.

It cannot be an early warning because it’s far too late. The communalisation of electoral politics is an ‘eyesore’ that should be avoided because it has consequences. More ears have been punctured by it than the entire population of earth counted 10 times over. But, maybe not for the first time, an MLA of the Kerala Assembly K Mohammd Shaji has been punished for allegedly appealing to the communal virus to help him win an election. It’s been ruled an 'eyesore' because there is physical evidence to prove his ‘crime’, one that the eye can see, is in full eyesight.

Year after year India’s ratings in human development index and hunger index are falling. We have fallen even below other South Asian countries. Our position in hunger index is 103 out of 119 countries. In 2017 our ranking was 100. In contrast, China is at 25th, Nepal 72nd, Myanmar 68th, Sri Lanka at 67th and Bangladesh at 86th position. It is no matter to rejoice that Pakistan is below us at the 106th rating. Hunger index is based on the level of nourishment, child mortality, child wasting and child stunting.

BHOPAL: Both the major parties of Madhya Pradesh have gone through the agony of defection by their stalwarts. Two important Congress leaders severed ties from the party following denial of tickets to their sons. They are Satya Vrat Chaturvedi from Chhatarpur and Prem Chand Guddu from Ujjain. Defection by Chaturvedi has shocked everyone because his family was regarded as Congress loyalists since the formation of Madhya Pradesh. His father Babu Ram Chaturvedi was a minister and mother Vidyawati Chaturvedi served the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha two terms each. Satyavrat himself was MLA and two-term Rajya Sabha member. Similarly Guddu was elected to the Lok Sabha on Congress ticket.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Cleverness is an essential part of a politician’s stock-in-trade. But when you try to be too clever, you end up with egg on your face.

Max Levitas was a towering figure of Britain’s labor movement. A hardened enemy of the Blackshirts in the years before World War II, the Irish-Jewish communist devoted nearly a century to fighting injustice. With the death of Max Levitas, who passed away on Friday, November 2 at the age of 103, Britain has lost one of its most beloved Communist figures. An adopted son of London, and the East End particularly, Max was a towering figure in his local community, widely respected for his staunch advocacy of working people against racism and oppression.

LIC is continuously in the news, not for good reasons. Renowned economists and media analysts are expressing reservations about the LIC’s investments during the last couple of years. These criticisms cannot be dismissed as rubbish and pushed beneath the carpet. The LIC’s finances are under pressure that are coming from Union government. A serious doubt is raised whether LIC has control over its investments. Financial assets of LIC belong to the people of India and they cannot be frittered away because of political considerations.

Shashi Tharoor has just been beaten in his own game by another smart alec, who has outsmarted the sesquipedalian, probably without his even knowing about it. Yes, some people are capable of devouring their victims without them being aware until they are about to be digested. A new word has been added to Urban Dictionary to denote how lovers of jabberwocky like Tharoor dig up one-and-a-half footer words that will help establish their gadzookery. The new word is ‘shashisesquipedalianism’, which stands for an ‘author’s tendency to find and use the longest and weirdest words in the dictionary by means of android apps and or Google to impress readers and listeners’.