View Articles

More than three months have passed since the historic general elections in Bangladesh on February 12 this year leading to the installation of the BNP government in the country headed by Tarique Rahman. PM Narendra Modi’s warm congratulations to the Bangladesh Prime Minister Tarique Rahman and later Indian external affairs minister Dr. S. Jaishankar’s talks with the visiting Bangladesh foreign minister Khalilur Rahman last month brought about some easing of the earlier bitter relations. But unfortunately, this gesture on the part of India has not been immediately followed.

India’s rupee is not merely depreciating. It is sending a warning flare about the structural weaknesses of an economy that spent two decades celebrating growth while postponing the harder questions of economic resilience, industrial depth, and external vulnerability.

Geopolitical conflicts affect the lives of people who hardly have any role in initiating the conflict. The ruling class of conflicting nations engage in wars and the burden of the disruptions caused in the process is asymmetrically imposed upon common people. The national leaders of Israel and the US decided to attack Iran out of desperation as both could sense a decline of their control over the Middle East. According to official statements it was to salvage the Iranian people from the tyranny of Islamic rule. They didn’t succeed. Instead, the US and Iran are caught in a quagmire that does not have an immediate solution.

The Indian government today is trying to present the danger arising from the growing tensions in West Asia and the Hormuz Strait as the biggest cause of the economic crisis. An atmosphere is being created as if India’s economic difficulties have suddenly arisen because of some external war. Whereas the truth is that the crisis visible today is the result of the economic and strategic policies of the last one decade. Hormuz has only fully exposed this crisis; the real crisis is that economic model which has made India import-dependent, corporate-centred, and strategically weak.

Uttar Pradesh became the hottest state in India on May 20, 2026 with Banda earning a distinction of the hottest city in the world with 48.2°C. Whether this affected the minds of the political leaders is not known, but their statements were hot, that made Uttar Pradesh the hottest political place in the country. Samajwadi Party Supremo Akhilesh Yadav identified himself with cockroaches and posted “CJP vs BJP”. Rahul Gandhi attacked BJP leaders PM Narendra Modi, Union Minister of Home Amit Shah, and RSS calling them traitor, while BJP leaders attacked Rahul as anarchist. All these have started at a time when Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly elections are to be held within 18 months from now.

The trouble with the post truth world is that it has an expiry date. The truth can be glossed over for some finite length of time, not perpetually. Truth eventually triumphs. It seems that we have reached that hour of reckoning. Indications were pronounced, coming from the Prime Minister himself, when he in no uncertain terms asserted the need for Indian citizens to ‘tighten their belts’ – an ‘austerity package of sorts’!

The gift wrapped Melody chocolate seemed to sing a new jingle: Jab Melody hain, tho Meloni hain" to soft power India's diplomatic thrust into a country where a saint was crucified and a great new religion was born that swept the world with millions of followers governed by the smallest country within another country — the Vatican. In the often stiff and scripted world of diplomacy, it took a humble Indian caramel toffee to melt the internet.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: In an important policy decision, the V. D. Satheesan Government has decided to scrap the K-Rail (SilverLine) semi-high-speed railway project from Thiruvananthapuram to Kasaragod. Addressing a press conference after the Cabinet meeting, Chief Minister Satheesan said all the land acquired for the project would be de-notified and the yellow-hued concrete markers that demarcated the prospective line would be removed.

History has again put the Congress in the politically very sensitive and emotionally complicated terrain. After the election result in Tamil Nadu, the Congress decided to support the Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) led by Vijay. As chief minister of the state, Vijay on May 18, paid tribute to Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam’s (LTTE’s) founder, Velupillai Prabhakaran, who was the chief accused in the former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination in 1991.

Supreme Court’s endorsement of lawful euthanasia for rabid, incurably ill and demonstrably dangerous stray dogs marks a decisive shift in India’s long-running debate over public safety, animal welfare and the limits of sentiment in civic governance. The ruling does not license indiscriminate killing, nor does it erase the place of compassion in animal policy. Its larger significance lies in restoring an uncomfortable principle that had been blurred by years of administrative drift and activist pressure: when human life is placed at risk by a preventable public hazard, the state cannot hide behind slogans, procedural inertia or selective interpretations of animal protection.