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Crores of households in India, both in urban and rural areas, have nothing that we call asset, neither physical nor financial. They have only their bodies and lives that they somehow carry on. They don’t have even an address since they don’t have even land or house of their own, and hence there is no question of their access to social security programmes. At best they receive a little charity from the charitable. Urban areas are worse with about 2 per household in this category while in rural areas the percentage is about 0.6. About 14.6 per cent household in urban areas have no physical asset, while 5.3 per cent has no financial asset. In rural areas, 2.5 per cent do not have any physical asset, and 3.4 per cent do not have any financial asset.

After months of suspense, the Punjab chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh has been replaced with Dalit leader Charanjit Singh Channi who took his oath as the Chief Minister on Monday. Punjab being a border state affected by militancy in the eighties, anything happening in Punjab is sensitive. The change could have been smooth, but the high command in its wisdom decided to change guard just five months before the Assembly elections.

New Delhi: Ace drag-flicker Varun Kumar says that winning the Hockey Bronze and standing on the podium along with my teammates at the Tokyo Olympics is perhaps the best moment of his life.

The Biden administration has been described as potentially transformative, equalling Lyndon B. Johnson’s years and possibly even rivaling Franklin D. Roosevelt’s tenure. While it’s still early, such comparisons may not be far off, considering the possible impact of pending environmental, infrastructure, voting, and labour rights legislation. If they become law (and at this stage that’s still a big if, thanks to Mr. Manchin & Co.), these bills would go a long way toward not only rescuing the country from the scourges of the health, environmental, racial, economic, and political crises that currently beset it. They would also mark a break with the neoliberal doctrine that has gripped decision-making since the 1980s. Or would they?

When Angela Merkel finishes up her fourth and final term as German chancellor on Sunday, September 26, it really will mark the end of an era. Though not the country’s longest-serving head of government (an honour still reserved for founding father Otto von Bismarck), Merkel’s reign was remarkable. Her sixteen years in office saw a sweeping consolidation of Germany’s economic and political might, firmly establishing it as the paramount power in the European Union. This ascent within the EU was accompanied by near-continuous economic growth at home — boosted by the low-wage sector created by previous chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s neoliberal reforms.

By equating the US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) with the four-nation Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD), China is probably justifying its massive military-economic expansion in the south and central Asian region. China knows very well QUAD can’t be likened to NATO. The two are totally different diplomatic and strategic concepts. One is a formal military treaty and the other is merely a security dialogue. NATO is headquartered in Brussels, Belgium. As many as 30 countries are NATO members.

If BJP can replace its chief ministers just ahead of the assembly elections, why can’t Congress do; this is the catchphrase put forward in public domain to rationalise the leadership’s action to remove Capt Amarinder Singh from the office.

Captain Amarinder Singh’s bed of thorns is now occupied by Charanjit Singh Channi, a Dalit Sikh and the first of his kind! Meaning there’s never been a Dalit Chief Minister of Punjab despite Dalit strength in Punjab’s population approximating 32 percent, one of those mysteries that nobody cares to unravel.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The concerted attempts to communalise Pala Bishop Mar Joseph Kallarangatt’s remark that jihadists were trapping women of other religions through ‘love’ and ‘narcotic’ jihad to convert them and use them for terror activities, must be defeated.

"BJP does not do caste politics,” said Yogi Adityanath, the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh at ‘Vikas Utsav’, an event organized at Lucknow on March 19 to mark the completion of four-and-a-half years of BJP government in Uttar Pradesh. However, he did not also miss the chance to mention Hindu religious centres like Ayodhya and Mathura for criticizing the opposition for avoiding going there out of fear of getting tagged as communal. “But the BJP … organized events that marked the religious and cultural identity of the places,” he said.