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Will there be a ‘Grand Alliance’ of the opposition ahead of 2019 Lok Sabha polls? As of now, many opposition parties including the Congress feel that it could only be a post-poll arrangement. For instance, the NCP chief Sharad Pawar has told a news channel recently: “A ‘Mahagathbandhan’ prior to the elections (Lok Sabha) is not practical.” The CPI-M has declined to have alliance in all the five poll-bound states and its general secretary Sitaram Yechury has said the ‘Grand Alliance’ could be only after the polls. The Aam Aadmi Party has decided not to join any alliance in 2019. The Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav has announced that they couldn’t keep on waiting for the Congress tie up in Madhya Pradesh. The last word is yet to come from the BSP chief Mayawati. Though she has abandoned alliance with the Congress for ensuing Assembly polls she has not said anything about the Lok Sabha polls.

Your flaws are what make you perfect. You can say that of most everything, too. Like review petitions in the Supreme Court, which point to flaws in otherwise thought to be ‘perfect judgements’. But that’s okay because in many cases, dissenting justices underline the ‘flaw’ in the majority judgement. But dissents such as those, however brilliant, don’t matter, till a review petition is filed.

Inequality and income disparities are growing. Rich are becoming richer. ‘Barclay’s Hurun India’ has published the ‘Rich list for 2018’. It is a list that carries the names of individuals with net worth exceeding Rs.1000 crore. The wealth of India’s top 100 richest people has jumped by Rs.3.08 lakh crore in 2018 to Rs.30.59 lakh crore, from Rs.27.51 lakh crore in 2017, a jump of 10.1 per cent. Mukesh Ambani has topped the list with an estimated wealth of Rs.3,71,000 crore. There are in all about 800 superrich in India. Of these, 233 individuals are in Mumbai, 163 in New Delhi and 70 in Bangalore – in the first three places. Achhe din for the super crorepatis.

Arithmetic is not the determinant of the political permutation and combination. It has many indices and the most vital has been the political awakening of the people, in this case the Dalits and mahadalits of the Hindi heartland. Some columnists recall the political maneouvering of the BSP founder Kanshi Ram. To stress upon that what Mayawati is doing in 2018, just before the assembly elections in Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Jaipur, is politically correct, may prove to be disastrous for her.

It began with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s advice to the Supreme Court judges in 2015 to be wary of the “five-star” activists who tried to push their social reforms agenda through the courts via public interest litigation. The advice was in keeping with the growing official impatience with non-government organisations (NGOs), especially those with foreign links since the government suspected their commitment to the ruling party’s policies.

The rising incidents of gold and US$ smuggling in and out of the country, following the downward exchange value of Indian Rupee, have become a source of major economic concern. They are threatening to further weaken the Indian currency. Recent reports from the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) suggest that the greenback outflow through illegal channels is growing on account of smuggling. In fact, DRI has launched a nationwide crackdown on foreign exchange smuggling, particularly of US$. For long, legal gold inflow occupied an important position, after petroleum and natural gas, in the country’s total import basket. Weakening Rupee seems to have further pushed the domestic demand for gold, especially among the rich, to protect their wealth against the depreciating value of Rupee. This comes after high-value Rupee demonetisation in November 2016. Recent interceptions and seizures indicate gold smuggling has significantly gone up. How the government handles the new challenge to the currency stability is not clear. The latest government measure to partially raise import duties on certain products to reduce current account deficit (CAD) seems to have been done rather in a half-hearted manner. This is unlikely to stabilise Rupee.

New Delhi: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has stirred raw nerve by raking up the issue of possible increase in power tariff in the National Capital Region (NCR-Delhi) through central legislation, squarely blaming the BJP led NDA government.

If there are seminal moments in politics, Jeremy Corbyn’s speech at the 2018 Labour conference will go down as one of them. This was when the planet took centre stage. From the Kerala floods to the Saddleworth moorland fires and from California to Scandinavia, 2018 has been a roller coaster of extreme weather events. This is the shape of things to come, but it took Corbyn to make “one-planet economics” the centrepiece of tomorrow’s politics.

BJP president Amit Shah’s statement that the decision to cut fuel prices by Rs2.5 shows the sensitivity of the Narendra Modi government towards the country and people is the height of hypocrisy. The claim, which came within hours of the announcement of the price reduction, amounts to indirectly admitting that the Modi government had remained insensitive to the skyrocketing fuel prices all these months, just as it has been to many other issues which made life unbearable for the people. If anything has forced Modi to act after looking away all this while, it is not because of sensitivity, as claimed by Shah, but due to panic over the cumulative effect of popular discontent and the loss of the battle of perception, thanks to the constant pumping of heat by Rahul Gandhi on the Rafale deal, where the government now appears to be manifestly in the wrong.

The signing of the agreement for the purchase of a multi-billion S-400 missile defence system between India and Russia is a historical event, but more than that Russia taking the initiative to iron out differences between India and Pakistan would prove to be a major step towards changing the geopolitical situation in South East Asia.