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NEW YORK: President Gustavo Petro’s Historic Pact government, in power since 2022, is a first in Colombia’s history. No other party ever aspired to serve all Colombians. Its existence depends on push-back against Colombia’s peculiar mix of corporations, big landowners, financial moguls, and narco-traffickers. Difficulties are cropping up now that call for sharpened resistance.

A woman's honour was one of the issues triggering the battle of Kurukshetra while the Rajputs of Chittor fought to the last man defending the honour of their queen Padmini and other womenfolk. Standing up to defend a woman's honour is thus not unheard of in India. Though Constitution has given equal rights to women, political misogyny continues to flourish seeking to reduce Mamata Banerjee or Priyanka Gandhi Vadra to objects of ridicule.

Delhi elections has clearly shown that the opposition INDIA bloc has now become a dilapidated house in which the walls and pillars are falling apart. Saying two of its allies – Congress and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has broken away, will be an understatement, since the Congress is not only trying hard to pull down AAP from power, but also Delhi Congress leader Ajay Maken made such sharp attacks on AAP and its Supremo Arvind Kejriwal that AAP leaders threatened to push for removal of Congress from INDIA bloc, if the Congress does not act against its Delhi leader. Thereafter, several allies of INDIA bloc supported AAP in Delhi election, and Congress has been isolated in the opposition camp.

Why is India talking with the Taliban? The Taliban are a throwback to the early Muslim invaders who made inroads into the subcontinent and who did the talking only with the sword? They came in through the Khyber Pass and ran rampage from the border to ‘Dilli’.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Congress party in Kerala has suffered a major political setback with the Wayanad police slapping charges of abetment to suicide against Sulthan Bathery MLA and Congress leader I.C. Balakrishnan.

Liberal opinion is invariably opposed to “nationalism”. It treats “nationalism” as a homogeneous term that necessarily entails a non-friendly, non-accommodative and rivalrous attitude towards other countries. This view however is completely erroneous; anti-colonial third world nationalism is entirely different from the nationalism that developed in Europe in the seventeenth century following the Westphalian Peace Treaties. This difference appears in the most unmistakeable form in the difference between the nationalism of a Hitler, which is descended from European nationalism, and that of a Ho Chi Minh, which exemplifies anti-colonial nationalism.

The National Statistical Office has recently released the fact sheet of Household Consumption Expenditure Survey 2023-24. It is the second survey report of the annual series that begun in 2022-23 after a long gap since the 68th Round Consumption Expenditure Survey released by the government in 2011-12. The government seems to be comfortable to release this report this time as the Monthly Per Capita Consumption Expenditure (MPCE) has increased from Rs 3,773 in 2022-23 to Rs 4,122 in 2023-24 in rural India and from Rs 6,459 to Rs 6,996 in urban India respectively.

RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat visiting Bengal for ten days is certainly not such a big news to draw attention. But his stay this time attains importance for the reason that he would discuss the state of the BJP and RSS in the state and give direction to the RSS workers to take up full responsibility for campaigning in 2026 assembly polls in the state. Apart, the RSS chief will also discuss with his senior RSS colleagues the functioning of the Narendra Modi government and the choice of the candidate for BJP president.

The New Year 2025 started with another assault on the education system. The Modi government, through the UGC, announced new draft regulations titled, ‘University Grants Commission (Minimum Qualifications for Appointment and Promotion of Teachers and Academic Staff in Universities and Colleges and Measures for Maintenance of Standards in Higher Education)’. This is yet another attempt by the central government to assume control over all the higher education institutions in the country.

No sooner than the latest GDP advanced estimates were released, doomsday sayers have stated with settled conviction that India has slowed down and should not claw back into the 8%-plus performance bracket in the next few years. Theirs view is that India might remain in the 6%-6.5% level for the foreseeable future.