View Articles

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.

India’s unreserved opposition to China’s One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative launched across four continents over ten years ago by President Xi Jinping with great fanfare was given vent to from time to time by powers that be, including prime minister Narendra Modi. More recently, India’s external affairs ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi found an occasion to tear to shreds the decade ago minted Chinese policy to win over the global south by promising and also funding all kinds of infrastructure projects – from roads to sea and river ports to new city development.

Spanish philosopher George Santayana didn’t have Palestine in mind when he coined the phrase, ‘history repeats itself. ‘Yet, Santayana’s maxim may apply to Hamas when comparing the group’s political evolution to the 16-year-torturous road traversed by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from classification by Israel and its Western allies as a terrorist organization to establishing the Palestine Authority on Israeli-occupied Palestinian land.

The renewed escalation of the Israel-Palestine conflict is providing additional impetus for gold to climb higher levels. The yellow metal has already been trending higher over the past two months, but the end of truce between Hamas and Israeli forces, unleashing new bomb attacks and destruction of lives and properties, particularly on the Palestine side, is continuing to fuel risk aversion and investor concerns, leading to further gains in gold prices.

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.

Run-ins within the family is nothing uncommon in sub-continental politics as even in the mediaeval period when Sahazada Selim unfurled the banner of rebellion against the greatest of the Mughals, emperor Akbar which seemed to have been a repeat act through generations in Indian history.. Democracy striking roots did not mark an end to this tradition of sorts which shifted action from the field of a bloody conflict to air-conditioned offices of political parties where plans of bloodless coups and campaigns can be chalked out sans the heat and dust of a war camp.

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.