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The Composition of Rajya Sabha will soon mirror Lok Sabha giving an advantage to the ruling BJP. Though it might reach double digits, it will not gain the majority yet. Stakes are high for the BJP and the opposition parties because of the upcoming Presidential and vice-presidential polls in June – July. Obviously, any changes in the composition of state assemblies will impact the Rajya Sabha, called the House of Elders.

The announcement made in Tokyo on Monday by the United States President Joe Biden about the formation of a new economic block named Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF) has signalled the arrival of a new economic arrangement in the India-Pacific region to counter growing influence of China. This block of 13 initial partners including USA, Japan and India is also a challenge to the five nation BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) which have been holding summits regularly and holding discussions for economic cooperation.

“Neither war that destroys us, nor peace that oppresses us.”

This historic anti-war slogan of the Spanish feminist movement holds one of the fundamental keys to building a horizon of peace. It claims that peace is not just a ceasefire, nor is it surrender, or silence before those who impose their wars on others. Rather, peace is the building of a foundation for fostering relations based on mutual respect and co-operation.

Navjot Singh Sidhu has been sent to the Patiala Central Jail to serve a year-long sentence in a case of road rage, registered in 1988. It took more than three decades for the Indian judicial system to convict and sentence a person whose felony was never in doubt; even the accused had accepted it all along. The argument that Sidhu had been making was that he didn’t intend to kill the person. The victim got killed by a mild blow of his fist that he never thought could kill someone.

The #MeToo movement was also about correcting the ‘wrongs of history’ in which powerful men got to get their comeuppance for bad deeds done decades ago. Those out of the ambit of #MeToo cheered and clapped, and the #MeToo survivors a sense of justice, and closure— happy ending to a lingering chapter.

A Hindi couplet by an unknown writer has been going viral on social media recently. Its English translation goes thus, “Birds feed on grains at the temple, and drink water at the mosque/I have heard that Radha’s stole is sewn by one Salma Begum/One Rafi used to sing ‘Raghupati Raghav’ at all gatherings/One Premchand used to recite ‘Idgah’ to children/…Where others would see Hindu or Muslim, I see the human in them…” This aptly describes the idea of a secular India.

In 2012, then United States President Barak Obama announced the so-called “Pivot to East Asia.” The United States started to focus less on the Middle East and more on East Asia. The main catalyst for this policy change was a fear of a rising People’s Republic of China. Today Biden warned China that if it makes any move on Taiwan, the U.S. will respond militarily.

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) visited Cuba on May 8-9. He began by highlighting regional unity as good for equal promotion of economic development for all states. AMLO addressed themes he had discussed previously when Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel visited Mexico City in 1921.

Why may one study Rammohun Roy (1772-1833), a contemporary of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) while studying Karl Marx (1818-1883) today? Some of the burning issues addressed by Rammohun Roy have remained with us since his time and, some others that had seemed to have been overcome, have come back with a renewed vengeance. Rammohun Roy was one of the makers of that Victorian England (Zastoupil 2010), in which Karl Marx lived and worked.

Sitting abroad and lashing out at the government, is not going to help the Opposition win the people at home over to its side. The ploy will boomerang even before the opposition leader tightens his seat belt on the return flight. Similarly, a pair of journalists writing anti-Modi pieces in the New York Times, and the Washington Post, isn’t going to win elections for the Congress.