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The thumping victories in the ‘Hindi Heartland’ has given a tremendous boost to the BJP going forward. In fact, it took Prime Minister Narendra Modi only hours to claim total dominance and he did not hold back from warning the Opposition to mend its ways and stop “coming in between” the people and the government's welfare schemes. With that the BJP launched its campaign for General Elections 2024.

Narendra Modi bhakts are absolutely correct in saying “Modi hai to mumkin hai” (everything possible with Modi around). Elections to the Madhya Pradesh assembly were held on November 17, thirteen days ahead of the Telangana elections. During the intervening days, political analysts and even some of the pollsters predicted a clear victory for the Congress. But suddenly after November 30 election to Telangana assembly, the narrative witnessed a major shift. Some exit polls came out with the revelation that BJP would win the MP election with majority.

There is some confusion on whether India should consider itself “Vishwaguru” or be wise and hold back on the boast? One view is why go the extra mile with the “present government’s exaggerated sense of the country’s global power and indigenous capability”, i.e., Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “macho manner” and muscular foreign policy, which has rubbed off on External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, too.

Government statistics released this week paint a rosy picture of the Indian economy with GDP growth clocking 7.6 per cent in the second quarter of this financial year 2023-24 on the back of strong manufacturing sector. This also strengthens India’s position as the fastest growing major economy, a position held by China for a couple of decades. The economy had grown 7.8 per cent in the first quarter of this financial year. But the next two quarters are expected to have slower growth as the full-year projections remain at 6.5 per cent for 2023-24.

A two-volume new ILO research has revealed that participation of India in Global Value Chains (GVCs) has resulted into social downgrading of the workforce, chiefly due to non-integration of labour standards into trade and investment. It is just opposite our expectation, since GVCs are a prominent feature of international trade, which should have enabled social upgrading.

As the polls for five Assemblies elections are over— and Rajasthan and Telangana have become unexpectedly exciting, with the Congress putting up a fight—it’s time to capture some broad trends.

The still nascent state of Telangana is up for its first great opportunity with Telangana Chief Minister, the great K. Chandrashekar Rao – ‘KCR’ for short – poised to make his exit if the exit polls of November 30 are to go by. The exit polls have given Telangana to the Congress and KCR’s Bharat Rashtra Samithi and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party are behaving like sore losers.

The platform of Central Trade Unions — AITUC, INTUC, HMS, CITU, AIUTUC, TUCC, SEWA, AICCTU, LPF and UTUC and Independent Sectoral Federations/ Associations along with Samyukta Kisan Morcha has congratulated the workers and farmers for the successful Mahapadav for three days from November 26 to 28, 2023 on their pressing issues as per the charter of demands and the action programme adopted in the historic All India Joint Convention of Workers and Farmers on August 24 at Talkatora Stadium in New Delhi.

If the exit polls on the five state assembly polls relating to Telangana are to be believed, the BJP’s grandiose plans to conquer South as envisaged by both the Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Home Minister Amit Shah, will be in tatters after December 3. Following the resounding defeat in Karnataka assembly in May this year, the marginalization of the BJP in Southern states is a blot on its status as the national party.

A hackneyed statement is made on the economy nowadays that is — India is in a bright or sweet spot, while many others tottering and more importantly the global economy is slowing down with geo-politics making the situation worse. It is true that Indian economy is among the fastest growing economies now and it is growing rapidly despite gloomy world, particularly Europe, middle-east and China.