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The very mention of Pakistan brings up the image of a country infested with religious fanatics, fundamentalists, terrorists where state actors such as ISI and Pakistan military provide support to these non-state entities. No prime minister in Pakistan has ever completed a full five-year term. That’s the kind of political instability in this country of 22 crore people.

While I have been uber-bullish on Brent crude and seven sister oil and gas supermajors ever since last summer, I never imagined the sheer scale of the supply shock that the global wet barrel market endured after President Biden imposed sanctions on Russian energy exports to punish Putin for his brutal invasion of Ukraine on February 24th.

Law performs both a normative function and a descriptive function. Criminal law constitutes offences which are punishable with imprisonment and/or fine. The law of rape is normatively defined in Section 375 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) as being a sexual act performed on a woman against her will, or without her consent. Hence, a normative element of the offence is the absence of ‘consent’ to the sexual act, defined as “unequivocal voluntary agreement when the woman by words, gestures or any form of verbal or non-verbal communication, communicates willingness to participate in the specific sexual act.” To this norm, there is an exception which is commonly known as the “marital rape exception”:

The juggling which US imperialism has to do to maintain its hegemony becomes more bizarre by the day. First, it kept needling Russia (“provoking the bear”) “on behalf of the western alliance” by expanding NATO to its very borders, knowing full well that Ukraine’s joining NATO would be totally unacceptable to Russia. Its objective was to prevent Russia and western Europe from coming closer, which would have occurred because of the latter’s dependence on the former for energy; it is even reported that to keep hostilities going between Russia and Ukraine, it sabotaged an agreement between the two, that had been witnessed by France and Germany.

Four years ago in March 2018, Prime Minister Narendra Modi while chairing the “Delhi End TB Summit” had said about ending TB in India by 2025, five years ahead of the TB-related SDG target by 2030. Now End World TB Day March 2022 has provided the occasion to see how far – and to what degree – India has progressed. India TB report 2022 released by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on this occasion has however disheartened by telling us that 2021 witnessed a 19 per cent increase from the previous year in TB patients’ notification to reach 19,33,381 from 16,28,161 in 2020. Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare Mansukh Mandaviya has still reiterated to free the country from tuberculosis (TB) by 2025, but is contrary to evidence.

There are two media in India. One the ‘left-liberal secular’ media. The other, the ‘rightwing-communal’ media. There are also Indians reporting and writing for international media. And as Yogi Adityanath was being crowned Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh for a second consecutive term, it was hard to believe that a lot of credit for this “feat” went to the ‘left-liberal secular’ media, and the Indians reporting and writing for the international media, like Washington Post and The Guardian.

Yogi Adityanath, who took oath as the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh for the second time consecutively on March 25, is generally referred to as “Maharaj ji”. He earned his new tag of “bulldozer baba” during the recent elections due to his frequent reference of the heavy JCB machine which his government deployed to raze the property of alleged criminals and mafias in the state. After a road accident in UP in which a Bulldozer completely smashed a cycle , the supporters of Yogi and BJP leaders used this meme to exhibit the muscle power of Yogi. Throughout the state the cadres and supporters were seen taking out victory processions on bulldozers and chanting slogan “bulldozer baba zindabad (long live bulldozer baba)” in praise of Adityanath. Bulldozer became a major rallying point during the Assembly elections. From campaigning to victory, the BJP and RSS cadres and supporters carried replicas of bulldozers.

With the beginning of the third decade of the new century, there is a blatant effort to distort the history of the country, surprisingly, without any historicity. The latest indicator is the call to rewrite the Constitution. Implicit in this call is the BJP government’s bid to make people remember only what V D Savarkar wrote in his monograph as early as in 1923, “...The whole of India is for Hindus by virtue of the fact that they alone, and not Muslims or Christians, considered its territory sacred.” He wrote further, “All Hindus claim to have in their veins the blood of the mighty race incorporated with and descended from the Vedic fathers, the Sindhus.” Summing it up, he wrote, “We [Hindus] are one because we are a nation, a race and own a common Sanskriti (culture).” He never mentions our most beautiful cultural heritage of unity in multiplicity.

Mr Fumio Kishida is the first Prime Minster, who made physical visit to India during the COVID 19 pandemic. He is the former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe‘s handpicked successor. His rise to the frontline was his vow to counter China’s growing influence by closely working with USA and other likeminded democracies. His visit enchanted Indian counterparts with the increased Japanese economic cooperation from US $ 33 billion to US $ 42 billion. But, it frayed to enthuse corporate sector, as the Japanese PM preferred silence on investment in India.

Colombia’s left-wing and progressive coalition, Pacto Historico, has become the country’s most popular political movement following the congressional elections on Sunday, March 13. This historical victory threatens two hundred years of ruling-class hegemony, with most of the coalition’s representatives coming from rural and working-class backgrounds. Depending on what happens in May’s presidential election, this win could have global reverberations. Crucially, the West stands to lose the unconditional loyalty of its most stable ally in the region.