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What is in store for the year 2023? Will it be good or bad? For the past three years, the world has faced an unprecedented pandemic – Covid - which has devastated the globe. Crystal ball gazers are hoping for a better scenario next year. They expect the economy's health will be restored and hope to resolve the war-like situation in Ukraine.

Come Wednesday, Congress leaders in West Bengal will step out on a march of Bharat Jodo Yatra whose success hinges on the participation of Left party activists in it. The fact stares the state Congress leadership in the face that the numbers lie with the Left, no matter if the state leadership seeks to overlook it.

India’s foreign policy is baked in the red hot sun beating down on the Great Gangetic Plains and can be encapsulated in “India will bend over backwards” to give the impression it never quarrels with other countries. Not with United States. Not with Russia. Not even with China, though the Chinese have made it a practice to rub India the wrong way, first thing in the morning, and the last thing in the evening.

Hunger in India remained a major concern throughout 2022 due to slow recovery from the economic downturn after the two years of the COVID-19 pandemic. True, as PM Narendra Modi drumming up, India became the fifth largest economy of the world, but his jubilation conceals the pangs of hunger of 80 crores of people in the country out of 140 crore population, who needed free foodgrain to survive. Moreover, the number of hungry is most likely to increase in 2023, since the Indian economy is going to fare badly as projected by almost all the assessment of national and international institutions.

In India, the political graph, image and charisma of a politician shoots up only when he continues to win elections. Electoral victory is the precondition for being a charismatic and popular leader. Winnability quotient defines the stature of the political leader. In contemporary Indian politics, the two figures who are credited as the most popular leaders happen to be the late Indira Gandhi and incumbent Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The capital budget for Indian Navy needs a rapid escalation in the coming years for its fleet expansion and modernisation to become a strong force to deter the growing threats from the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), the world’s largest naval power in size, in the Indian Ocean and Pacific regions. The government must recognise the fact that PLAN is four times larger and stronger than the Indian Navy. It is true that for the first time the Indian Navy’s capital expenditure target is raised by as much as 45 percent, this financial year.

Jamshedpur: Bengaluru pro Chikkarangappa carded three-under 69 on the last day and with a four round total of 20-under 268 won the season-ending Rs 3-crore prize money TATA Steel Tour Championship, by two shots at the Beldih and Golmuri Golf Courses in Jamshedpur.

Even as India has signed the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework deal to address the ongoing biodiversity loss, restore ecosystems and protect indigenous rights, the Union Government has been harbouring plans to amend the Biological Diversity Act, 2002 in a way that may dilute the institutional structure and checks contained within the Act.

It took 75 years but at last at least one politician has confessed that India is not a safe country for Muslims. Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Abdul Bari Siddiqui told this to his children, a son and a daughter. Growing up they lived the privileged lives that comes with being children of a Bihar minister. The son is currently in the United States, while the daughter is in London.

India’s 2022 began with hopes of a rebound from covid-induced downturn, which materialized to a large extent as the year progressed, but is winding down to a close with dark clouds beginning to appear on the horizon over threats of a return to the pandemic environment.