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Canadian media and politicians claim that the country’s public health care system is “what separates us from the Americans.” Social democrats have baptized Cooperative Commonwealth Federation (CCF)/New Democratic Party (NDP) leader Tommy Douglas as the “Father of Medicare,” the official name for Canada’s health system. Election after election, opinion polls position health care as one of the key public concerns. Yet, for all this attention, the history of the struggle for socialized medicine in Canada remains poorly understood.

On March 23, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva finally and definitively won his ongoing legal battle. After years of judicial harassment, culminating in a six-hundred-day prison sentence, the Supreme Court has finally ruled that former judge Sérgio Moro was biased in his ruling and that Lula’s conviction should be overturned. That means that Lula has been unleashed to take on Jair Bolsonaro in the coming 2022 general elections.

The BJP High Command has, perhaps, been most unkind to former Lok Sabha speaker Sumitra Mahjan. While she was only given Padma Bhushan, lesser mortals were honoured with Padma Vibhushan, the second highest civilian award. She had been an eight term M.P, second woman speaker of Lok Sabha after Meera Kumar and also a Union Minister of state, holding the portfolios of Human Resource Development, Communication and Information Technology and Petroleum and Natural Gas. She represented urban constituency of Indore almost without a break.

Political experts and pollsters are busy deciphering the implication of Mamata Banerjee campaigning at a stretch for five days in her new electoral abode Nandigram. If for some it is the sign of her fighting the battle with her back to the wall, some are also looking at this as the success of the strategy of the BJP to her confined to one constituency. They argue that Mamata could well have used this time frame for going around in the state.

There are two sides to every story. One, that India’s healthcare system is not in great shape, and that there is a dearth of hospital beds, doctors, and paramedic staffs to react to a health emergency like COVID pandemic. But turn to the other side, and one finds that merely spending more on health may not necessarily lead to a desired health outcome.

Maharashtra was going from bad to worse for the last two months. People were violating the advisories of the government, new corona virus strains were being found, and even double mutation were found which were believed to escape immunity of the recovered or vaccinated. However, when the Chief Minister of Maharashtra sought a roadmap for lockdown from his officials, the political parties in the states including the BJP, whose leader had announced lockdown without roadmap of implementation.

The Supreme Court has declined to stay the issuance of electoral bonds in its current tranche from April 1 to 10. The Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), an NGO, had made an urgent plea that the issuance of bonds meant for the four state assembly elections be stayed.

The Modi government has perfected the art of using a safeguard against something to perpetuate exactly the same act or tendency. So, national unity is cited as the reason for attempts to wreck national unity and national interest is taken to mean the interest of the ruling party, especially when there is a conflict between the two.

New Delhi: Experienced midfielder Manpreet Singh will lead the 22-member Indian Hockey Team to face Olympic Champions Argentina in the FIH Pro League matches on 11th and 12 April in Buenos Aires.

With the RSS and BJP making all out efforts to reach out to the people for convincing them that the farmers’ movement for abrogation of the three farm laws was against the national interest and was systematically fading out, the farmer leaders are envisioning to expose the dirty design of the government by giving a major boost to their agitation from April.