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RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat has said that the NDA's return to power after a decade in office was a testimony to the good things that happened on its watch. This is beyond comprehension. How could he claim that the NDA governed the country? Nothing could be more bizarre. The people of India know that neither the BJP, nor the NDA, ruled the country. India was ruled by Narendra Modi as he would regularly boast that “this is the government of Modi; this is the word of Modi and this is the guarantee of Modi.”

One of the first tasks of Prime Minister, Narendra Modi on assuming office for the third consecutive occasion was to sign a file awarding the 17th instalment of the Kisan Samman Nidhi. The act assumes significance as the BJP-led NDA government had been on an almost collision course with farmers who had laid a virtual siege to the National Capital with their tractors protesting against the three farm laws.

Narendra Damodardas Modi became the Prime Minister of India for the third term day before yesterday, and equalled Jawaharlal Nehru's tenure, statistically. However, did he earn the respect of the citizens of India that was equivalent to what Nehru had earned?

Massive street protests erupted worldwide after the Israeli military killed 274 Palestinians in the Nuseirat refugee camp as part of a “hostage rescue operation” in Gaza. Four Israeli captives taken prisoner by Hamas on Oct. 7 were recovered in the manoeuvre, amounting to 68 people killed for every individual extracted. The mass killing pushes the Gaza war death toll, already at over 36,000, even higher.

Would Giorgia Meloni prefer to partner with the “mainstream pro-European” Emmanuel Macron, or else the “far-right outsider” Marine Le Pen? Ahead of this weekend’s elections to the European Union’s parliament, much punditry on the EU’s future speculated on the next moves by the Italian prime minister — deemed a potential “kingmaker” in Brussels coalition-building or else a partner in a new nationalist international. Rival far-right candidates accused Meloni of sucking up to the French president (and to the EU’s top official, Ursula von der Leyen); some more proudly Europeanist commentators hoped Macron and Meloni could “join forces to save Europe.” But now, with Macron calling snap elections that could easily vault Le Pen’s party into the national government, perhaps Meloni won’t have to choose one over the other after all.

Narendra Modi is now Prime Minister of India for the third time. He took the oath of office Sunday evening at the Rashtrapati Bhavan. As many as 30 cabinet ministers, 36 ministers of state (MoS) and 5 MoS (independent charge) were also sworn in along with Narendra Modi, who seemed unusually accommodating while choosing his Council of Ministers. Among them are old suspects like Rajnath Singh, Amit Shah, S. Jaishankar, Piyush Goyal and Nirmala Sitharaman. Key BJP allies Janata Dal-United and the Telugu Desam Party also got representation in Modi’s Council of Ministers.

The NDA coalition government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has just taken office, and it's too early to predict how it will perform, even whether it will run its five-year term. It is common knowledge that India has a messy history of multi-party governments. Late BJP leader Atal Behari Vajpayee also ran an alliance of 24 parties from 1998 to 2004. India’s experience with coalition governments has been somewhat tumultuous.

The country’s industrial outlook for the current year as well as the next few years will depend on the stability of the new government and how the Bharatiya Janata Party deals with its alliance partners and the opposition, which will have a formidable presence in the newly-elected Parliament. At stake are several large investment projects, including those under foreign direct investment (FDI), worth $30 billion. A good number of them are linked with production of semiconductors and display fab manufacturing. The last government approved an outlay of Rs76,000 crore (>US$10 billion). The government offered fiscal support of 50 percent of project cost on pari-passu basis for all technology nodes under the Scheme for Setting-up of Semiconductor and Display Fabs in India. It included compound semiconductors, silicon photonics, sensors fab and connected facilities.

India, under Prime Minister Garib Kalyan Anna Yojna, has been giving free foodgrains to 80 crore poor people who are dependent for food on government, because they don’t earn enough to support their needs for food. Their number remained the same for the last 10 years of the Modi regime. Children have been facing severe food poverty which Prime Minister Narendra Modi must address urgently in his third term.

At the end of the bitterest general elections in recent times, it is only in Assam that the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the main opposition, the Congress, are broadly satisfied with the outcome. The BJP won 11 out of 14 Lok Sabha seats while the badly divided, and always under-estimated Congress, swept the remaining three seats, surprising analysts and defying conventional wisdom.