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Debt is a crucial source of financing for development. However, when debt becomes burdensome, it can threaten the very sovereignty of a nation. This is the situation that many African states are facing today. I have learned about Africa’s rich mineral wealth from my students from various African States who come to study in India. While Africa is abundant in mineral resources, its people remain very poor.

India celebrates 76th Republic Day on January 26, 2025 to mark the enforcement of the Constitution of India on that day in January 1950. Results of General Elections to the Lok Sabha (House of the People) on June 4, 2024 have shown shift from over ten terminal years of inhumanity, bigotry, unspeakable cruelty, about the deliberate, full throttled, organized and hate filled othering of Muslims, about complicit institutions, a partisan judiciary and law enforcement machinery, to the return of the trappings of constitutional parliamentary democracy.

More than six weeks have passed since the visit of Indian foreign secretary Vikram Misri to Dhaka on December 9 and his wide ranging talks with his Bangladeshi counterpart to improve the worsening bilateral relations between the two neighbouring countries. Latest indications, however, suggest that the interim government headed by Dr. Mohammad Yunus is courting Pakistan in a big way through collaboration in the area of defence sector which poses a security threat to India.

The inaugural speech of Donald Trump and the flurry of executive orders issued by him on the first day as president, show that Trump does what he said he will do. In claiming to make America great again, Trump has threatened to take over the Panama Canal, the control of which had been handed to Panama by a treaty in 1977. He has renamed the `Gulf of Mexico’ as the `Gulf of America’ and promised more imperial steps to expand American territory as no US President has done in recent history. Trump has ordered an emergency in the southern borders with Mexico and deployed the army to check immigrants crossing the border. Other anti-immigrant measures, including annulling the right of citizenship of persons by birth in the country, are bound to heighten xenophobia and whet the appetite of the far-right.

WASHINGTON: Monday January 20 was, as hard as this may be to remember, Martin Luther King Jr Day. An enormous number of schools all around the country were either closed or had assemblies where students heard about the life and accomplishments of the martyred civil rights crusader.

The spat between Mohan Bhagwat and Prime Minister Narendra Modi is no more confined to assertion of supremacy by both the leaders, instead it has taken an ugly turn with Modi bhakts and supporters launching a campaign for Bhagwat’s ouster from the post of RSS chief. The major accusation that is making round saffron ecosystem is, he has been reversing his own statement made on some earlier occasion; he is gradually trying to become secular these days; his statements are not in conformity to the RSS’s philosophical preachings.

The economy in our country has been sliding down even deeper in New Year of 2025. Data predicts further sliding to be a four year low of 6.4 per cent in 2024–25, mainly on account of a poor showing in the manufacturing and services sectors, according to government data released on January 8, 2025.

The 2025 Global Talent Shortage Survey by ManpowerGroup reveals alarming trends in talented workforce shortage in India that is worse than the global average. About 80 per cent of employers in India are struggling to find out the right talent for the works available, as against the global average of 74 per cent. Such an alarming level of talent shortage needs urgent attention in the fast-changing world of work with deployment of new technologies requiring special skills.

The international migrant is a global pariah, if the takes on them of US President Donald Trump and some of the leaders of far Right political outfits in Europe are anything to go by. Both have immigrants on their radar.

Is the U.S. President Donald Trump looking for a big deal with the Chinese President Xi Jinping in his second term to reshape the global order favouring two super powers and marginalizing both Western Europe and Russia? The question gets all the relevance if one analyses the policy announcements by the second term Republican President in the last 48 hours after taking oath.