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The deterioration in recent weeks of the security situation in the Red Sea, where Yemen-based Houthi militia in support of Palestine have disrupted global trade by launching drone and missile attacks on vessels, is posing a geopolitical risk to LNG prices.

While the maverick Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar is set to part with INDIA bloc posing question about the future of the alliance in the state, the top leaders of alliance held a mini-INDIA meet in Tamil Nadu pledging to defeat the BJP. Displaying the adroitness of the INDIA bloc, Tamil Nadu chief minister M K Stalin emphasised that INDIA bloc leaders have to realise that when the BJP was rattled at the prospect of a win for the Opposition alliance even at the level of a mayor poll in Chandigarh, unity among constituents will dislodge the saffron party from power at the Centre.

Pre-election Interim Union Budget 2024-25 may not be expected to be different than one of the kinds that was tabled in 2019 by the PM Narendra Modi led government when the Union Government did not restrict itself only to passage of the vote on account, but went beyond to announce spectacular surprises to tempt various sections of the populace, including the workforce. Unemployment data was leaked 45 years high at 6.1 per cent, which is even higher at 7.4 per cent as per the CMIE data for January 27, 2024 on the basis of 30-day moving average, which was as high as 10.5 per cent in October 2023. Working class is more angry today compared to 2019, and is on the war path campaigning with the slogan “Defeat Modi, Save India”, on account of PM Modi’s policies that the joint front of Central Trade Unions has dubbed as ‘anti-labour’.

The two daughters of legendary musician and sitar player Pandit Ravi Shankar are making waves with their scintillating and soulful music. Perhaps the best contribution of Bharat Ratna Pandit Ravi Shankar is his two daughters – Anoushka Shankar and Norah Jones. Anoushka is currently on an India tour and has performed in Bengaluru (January 22), Hyderabad (January 24), and Mumbai (January 25). She performed in Pune (January 26) and again in Mumbai (January 27) before concluding her India tour with a show in Delhi on January 31.

As a fallout of French President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to India as the Chief Guest at the country’s 75th Republic Day celebrations on January 26 this year, India and France have agreed to bolster their collaboration in the defence and aerospace sectors, finalizing the Indo-French defence industrial roadmap and many other equally strategic agreements. Macron is the fifth French president to be invited as Chief Guest at India’s Republic Day after President François Hollande (2016), Nicolas Sarkozy (2008), Jacques Chirac (1998), Valery Giscard d’Estaing (1980) and Jacques Chirac as PM (1976). This, incidentally, was Macron’s third visit to India, after earlier visits in 2018 and 2023.

The Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) to defeat the BJP has run into choppy seas, losing its cohesive hold and threatening to return to the previously splintered status of the Opposition. Cracks have developed and the INDIA bloc cannot agree on seat-sharing formulas. Common enemy BJP is gung ho watching INDIA look set to implode. Mamata Banerjee, Nitish Kumar, Bhagwant Man, there are plenty of opposition leaders ploughing the ground under the INDIA bloc’s feet.

The Broadcasting Services (Regulation) Bill, 2023, a draft of which was circulated for public comments by the union ministry of information and broadcasting in November 2023, is yet another step by the Modi government to restrict and stifle freedom of expression. It seeks to replace the nearly three-decade-old Cable Television Networks Regulation Act, 1995. Prior to this, the government has brought in the Telecommunications Act of 2023, the Digital Personal Data Protection Act of 2023 and, earlier, the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021.

With Indian policing system getting excruciatingly communalised under the command of home minister Amit Shah, the Assam police chief G.P. Singh lodging an FIR against Rahul Gandhi and at least six other senior Congress leaders leading the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra, has certainly neither been shocking nor disappointing.

Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee’s outbursts against the Congress as ‘discourteous’ and her declaration that her party would go solo in the forthcoming Lok Sabha Election 2024 is being blown out of proportion, to emphasize that INDIA bloc is entirely in disarray, and it would help PM Narendra Modi and his BJP in West Bengal, which is just against the political ground reality.

“The people of India, having solemnly resolved to constitute India into a sovereign Democratic republic and to secure to all its citizens Justice, social, economic and political, Liberty of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship, Equality of status and opportunity, and to Promote among them all, Fraternity assuring the this twenty sixth day of November, 1949, do hereby adopt, enact, and give ourselves this Constitution.”