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Indian electorate have their own political mind and they don’t simply believe on the electoral promises and political guarantees being distributed freely for quite some time now by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his chief opponent Congress leader Rahul Gandhi. PM Modi has said all Congress guarantees in the past have fallen flat, while Rahul Gandhi has said trust in Modi is guarantee of betrayal. It is in this backdrop the very reliability of political guarantees has sharply been in focus and is under serious public scrutiny.

India, the world’s largest democracy, has unfortunately been witnessing a backsliding on human rights. It is in this context that the National Human Rights Commission of India (NHRC) will be undergoing its review for accreditation by a jury of its peers which is the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions (GANHRI) in March 2024.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: With the campaign for the Lok Sabha elections slipping into top gear, Kerala is set for a no-holds-barred and bruising battle. The State is going to the polls on April 26.

In the pictures accompanying the report, everybody is smiling. Even the chubby baby. But behind the happiness, there’s unhappiness. We are talking of ‘Bharat, that is India’ and the World Happiness Report for 2024 which makes sad reading for Indians who have been thrown to the wolves because of a sick ranking in the World Happiness Index. At No.126, India is unhappier than Pakistan and Afghanistan. Worse, the unhappiness comes shining through with all its ugliness. Imagine 900 million unhappy voters lining up across the length and breadth of India in a month from now to vote in a new government for a happier India?

The year 2024 has been marked by a flurry of elections across the globe, each carrying significant weight in shaping the future trajectory of their respective countries and, to some extent, the world at large. Among these pivotal elections, Britain’s upcoming general election stands out as a crucial turning point, especially in the context of post-Brexit recovery efforts.

United Kingdom Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak is in a tight spot. So is the Conservative Party which he leads as the general election is inching closer. The political fortune of Sunak and the party he leads cannot be stated to be progressing swimmingly. It seems to have sailed into uncharted waters at this point of time.

There is one question that haunts many viewers of Christopher Nolan’s film on creator of the atom bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki – J. Robert Oppenheimer --- which swept the Oscars this year. Did Oppenheimer endorse the use of the bomb on an essentially defeated enemy? And if so, how can we hail such a man as hero? One of the reasons he endorsed it might be because of his ego. He had spent three years building the bomb with his team at a secret facility in Los Alamos,, and he wanted to see the consummation of his efforts. Greatness was within his grasp. Also, he reasoned that the bomb’s power would ensure the end of all wars in future.

Hundreds of Cubans demonstrated peacefully in Santiago de Cuba and other cities across the island on March 17. Portrayed in some U.S. corporate media outlets as “anti-government” protests, the demonstrations were focused on electrical power outages and food shortages.

The late awakening of the Supreme Court headed by the Chief Justice of India Dr. D Y Chandrachud in seeing the quid pro quo relationship between the donors and the ruling party under the Electoral Bonds Scheme 2017 is welcome. The CJI has been firm in getting all the details from the State Bank of India by March 21 since the SBI has been dilly -dallying to furnish the crucial info contained in the unique code of bond. Once it is furnished by the SBI without hiding any details, the identity of the bond purchaser and the political party beneficiary will be known.

Vladimir Putin has been re-elected as the Russian Federation’s new old president, securing a record fifth term in office with a thundering 87.28 percent of the vote, supported by over 75 million voters, more than his win in the 2018 presidential polls. To a consistent observer of the Russian affairs, the news is hardly breaking, as the numbers tallied nicely with Putin’s approval ratings, at a whopping 87 percent. Putin’s opponents in the presidential race barely managed single digit support, including the Communist Party’s Nikolay Kharitonov at 4.31 percent, Vladislav Davankov of the New People party at3.85 percent and Leonid Slutsky of the Liberal Democrats at 3.20 percent respectively.