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THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: There is no change in the Budget script as far as Kerala is concerned. It has been an unredeeming tale of severe neglect from the Union Government, repeated ad nauseum over the years.

In Assam, bad news continues for the opposition: little tangible progress has been made in pre-election seat sharing talks among major parties opposing the ruling Bharatiya Janata party(BJP), as they desperately struggle to build a united anti-Saffron front, in recent weeks.

The irony of Middle Eastern geopolitics is that Israel makes it increasingly difficult for US President Joe Biden to support it, while Iran strengthens domestic US anti-Iranian and pro-Israeli hardliners. The hardliners are emboldened by the failure of calibrated US strikes in response to numerous attacks on US forces in the Middle East and on shipping in the Red Sea to deter Iranian-backed militia groups in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen.

Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud’s call for an end to the ‘adjournment culture’ in the functioning of the courts could not have come a day sooner. “In the near future, we must address structural issues affecting the judiciary such as the pendency of cases, our archaic procedures, and the culture of adjournments,” he said while delivering an address at the inauguration ceremony of the upcoming year-long celebrations marking the diamond jubilee of the Supreme Court.

Reduction in the total allocations for Union Ministry of Labour and Employment and also workers’ social security in the Interim Union Budget 2024-25 has revealed PM Narendra Modi government’s anti-labour stance, an allegation that has been labelled by the joint platform of Central Trade Unions (CTUs) since the passage of four controversial labour laws in the Parliament of India in 2019 and 2020.

On the third anniversary of the military coup in Myanmar, a joint statement from the European Union, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, South Korea, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States condemned the ongoing violence and human rights abuses perpetrated by the military regime. The statement released by Global Affairs Canada highlighted the devastating impact of the coup. Thousands of civilians have been jailed, tortured, and killed. Its military rule has caused the widespread destruction of infrastructure and the displacement of millions of people, it said.

“Our Prime Minister firmly believes, we need to focus on four major castes,” said Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her Interim Union Budget 2024-25 speech – Garib (poor), Mahilayen (women), Yuva (youth), and Annadata (Farmer). Their needs, their aspirations, and their welfare are our highest priority, she claimed. However, in reality, as the budget papers reveal, it was an utter lie, advocacy of the just opposite of what the government did, a mere reverse psychology. The reality is, they suffered the worst in the last 10 years of Modi rule, but on the eve of Lok Sabha General Election 2024, Government just needed to pacify them for their votes.

After Hemant Soren, will it be the turn of Arvind Kejriwal. Both of them Chief Ministers who became targets of the Enforcement Directorate. The Jharkhand Chief Minister got arrested and had to resign. Hemant Soren says he will fight to win; fighting words, but the writing is on the wall. Problem is, the Modi government is whittling opposition Chief Ministers one after another and leaving them in Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra’s wake.

The European Union nations which talk of liberty and democracy and consider themselves as superior to others including the US in terms of protection of human rights have shown their true colour in the current Israel-Hamas war which is continuing for nearly four months.

There are well-known problems associated with the concept of gross domestic product as well as with its measurement. The inclusion of the service sector within GDP is something that Adam Smith would have objected to on the conceptual grounds that those employed in this sector constituted “unproductive workers”; certainly in the former Soviet Union and East European socialist countries, it was not the GDP but the gross material product excluding the service sector that was considered the relevant measure.