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By far the biggest takeaway from the 2024 general elections for India is that the ruling coalition will no longer be able to amend the Constitution and convert the country from a secular State to a Hindu Rashtra. During the election campaign, the Prime Minister of India memorably said, “Ram is my idea of India.” The people of India have denied him the opportunity to see his dream come true through an amendment to the Constitution.

A familiar scene played out in the city council chambers of Richmond, California, on May 22, 2024. For the last twenty years, since members of the anti-Chevron Richmond Progressive Alliance (RPA) first got elected to the council, any measure before that body affecting the city’s largest employer and business taxpayer has been hotly debated.

Indian National Congress (INC) is heading for another very interesting political battle for the Rajya Sabha, where it had just escaped a loss of the post of the Leader of Opposition. With two of its members in the Upper House recently elected to the Lok Sabha, INC's strength in the upper house reduced to 26, just one more than the required number of 25 to hold the post.

The overall results of the Lok Sabha election are certainly a setback for the BJP. Getting 240 seats, it failed to achieve the absolute majority it had gained in the 2014 and 2019 elections. Narendra Modi is now heading a National Democratic Alliance (NDA) coalition government with parties like the Telugu Desam Party and the Janata Dal (United) providing the numbers for a majority in the Lok Sabha.

Shaken by their leader Nitish Kumar prostrating before Prime Minister Narendra Modi and making an uncouth retreat from his stand, which he had taken before leaving for Delhi to discuss JD(U)’s share in the Union Cabinet, a section of senior JD(U) leaders are contemplating jumping the sinking ship that the JD(U) has become. These leaders are yet to make out the real reason for Nitish's surrender to Modi but they're not happy souls.

BJP victory would soon turn into a reality and it was no illusion — that was what Modi and Shah told the investors. But the crash came at the most unexpected moment and led to a whopping Rs 30 lakh crore loss on the day the Lok Sabha election results were announced. It was a nexus of government, media and corporate that devastated retail investors in the stock market. Weeks before election results, the advice to people came from Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah to "buy stocks before June 4", suggesting that the market would surge. They claimed to have known that there could not be otherwise.

Even as the Congress in Kerala is luxuriating in its remarkable Lok Sabha election victory, the party is riven by virulent factionalism, submerged under an avalanche of complaints lodged by victorious party candidates, of active attempts at sabotage by rivals. Topping the list is senior Congress leader K. Muralidharan, who had the mortification of finishing a poor third in the Thrissur Lok Sabha constituency. The infighting in the Congress found BJP candidate Suresh Gopi creating history by opening the BJP’s Lok Sabha account in Kerala.

A recent Supreme Court judgment affirming the “right to be free from adverse effects of climate change” as a fundamental Constitutional right has sparked a noteworthy debate. This landmark decision sits at the intersections of the urgent imperatives of biodiversity conservation, human rights and climate action. Central to the controversy is the conservation of the Great Indian Bustard habitat, which has been compromised by overhead power transmission lines.

Only two weeks ago, the Biden administration lifted its ban on the use of U.S. arms by Ukraine inside of Russia. It also said U.S. troops, under the umbrella of NATO, could even end up directly battling against Russians inside of Ukraine. Now, to add insult to injury, the Biden administration has lifted its ban on supplying U.S. weapons directly to the fascist Azov Battalion. Two years ago, Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna, citing the fascist ideology of the Azov Battalion, had introduced legislation in Congress that forbade sending weapons to the neo-Nazi group.

Having been confirmed as the finance minister in the Modi 3:0 cabinet, Nirmala Sitharaman is more pressed for time compared to her other colleagues as the budget of the new government is hardly a month away. And her budget-making this time is more complex as she has to accommodate the compulsions of coalition politics as well. Overall, she faces a complex landscape of economic challenges.