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Now that the dust has settled, it is time to take cool look at why so many analysts keep getting elections predictions wrong. The key reason in my view is that they remain stuck in the past and continue to rely on the politics of caste, community and religion and region to reach their conclusions. But these factors lost their predictive power long back.

Malaysia has emerged as a potential external operations base for Hamas, the Islamist group that controls the Gaza Strip if Turkey expels or restricts the group’s movements as a part of its rapprochement with Israel.

Wikimedia Foundation (WMF), the organization that runs the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia, has stopped accepting cryptocurrency donations, the no-profit with a mission to bring free knowledge to all, said on May 1.

Random arrests of illegal Rohingya settlers from different Indian states remain a cause for concern among Indian security analysts. Mostly the detection of illegal aliens is more a matter of chance rather than the outcome of real time intelligence inputs.

The whole idea and ideal of secularism came decades later, but the day India decided to be a pluralistic society, with Hindu-Muslim-Sikh-Isai, all living under the same sky, that day India ensured it would be a communal cauldron for all times to come. Dr. BR Ambedkar was practical. He wanted to make a clean slate of the Partition—transfer of every Muslim ‘here’ to swap for every Hindu ‘there’, but other sense prevailed and the repercussions are being felt to this day.

Youth (age group 15-24) are almost five times more likely to be unemployed than adults across the Asia and the Pacific, and when they secure a work it is often in the informal economy with low wages and poor working conditions. After the COVID-19 pandemic, they are now facing additional labour market barriers with long-term repercussion for their earnings and life chances.

Prices of edible oils, wheat, fertilizers and other commodities are soaring high. On the other side food traders, exporters and political elite are upbeat seizing opportunity, hoarding, getting ready for a wind fall of profits from potential export opportunities amidst current Russia- Ukraine war.

It is the new normal: Of police being misused to misuse its powers given to it under the law because politicians and political parties want to settle scores with one another. The funny thing is, funnier things are happening because of this trend. An MP-MLA couple is arrested by the Maharashtra Police and charged with sedition for threatening to chant the Hanuman Chalisa outside Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray’s residence! Two, Gujarat MLA Jignesh Mevani is arrested in Gujarat and dragged all the way to Barpeta in Assam by the Assam Police!

MMTC (erstwhile Minerals and Metals Trading Corporation) , India’s one of the two highest foreign exchange earners until seven years ago, largest exporter of minerals from India for several decades and a frontline international trading company with a turnover of over $7 billion heads towards liquidation in its 60th year. Its staff members have not been receiving its salaries for months together.

As the year 2022 rolled in with a focus on new FTP (Foreign Trade Policy) for 5 years, which became overdue, global trade underwent major changes with US-China trade conflict, followed by COVID 19 and Ukraine invasion by Russia. The major deterrents as a fallout are the supply chain constraints and hindrances in energy supply, owing to China being the power house of global workshop and Russia being the behemoth for energy supply.