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The pandemic and its consequences manifested in different parts of the world and more importantly its differential impact on classes of people and segments of population reveals deeper chasms and structural divides that capitalism reproduces in its process of accumulation.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Kerala has done it once again. For the fourth time in a row, the State has topped a ranking of States on health indicators. The ‘health index’ is part of a report prepared by the NITI Aayog, the Union Health and Family Welfare Ministry and the World Bank.

Wuhan Municipal Health Commission China had reported a cluster of cases and the novel coronavirus COVID-19 was eventually identified on December 31, 2019. It soon swept across the world, pushing health systems to the brink, necessitating lockdowns, with great loss of life and livelihoods. The year 2020 passed revealing the failure of the world to learn lessons from earlier epidemics. The year 2021 began with great hope from emergence of vaccines which were rolled out in several countries including India. Despite that more devastating second wave struck within months revealing unpreparedness, faulty vaccine rollout policies, and taking the disease lightly. Now, after two years of the outbreak, Omicron variant is spreading like wildfire, at such a rate that the world has not seen earlier, reminding us that we are woefully unprepared with all our faulty policies and inappropriate behaviour despite warnings. We must learn lessons now and prepare for the next epidemic in 2022.

The Covid-19 pandemic has marked the end of an era for Southeast Asia’s combined oil and gas production, pushing the region’s output in 2021 to below 5 million barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd) for the first time since 1998, a threshold that is not likely to be exceeded again in the future despite new project start-ups in coming years.

What does the crystal ball say about the year 2022? As we enter the new year, it is time to look ahead and gaze at the future. Of course, much can happen, which is unexpected and unknown. The year will be one of the multiple pivots: Economic, environmental, political, social, and personal. In short, 2022 will be challenging politically while the economy and Covid are unpredictable.

Long banned, Christmas has finally, at least tacitly, arrived in Saudi Arabia; just don’t use the name in marketing or be ostentatious about your tree.

The Indian government has once again deferred the proposed crypto bill as the winter session ended without the bill being introduced to the parliament. It’s believed that the government could not make up its mind on the content and direction of the bill. The government could not decide whether it should impose a ban on cryptocurrencies or let them function as legitimate entities by providing a legal framework. More importantly, it couldn’t decide whether it should favour cryptocurrencies, stay neutral to their growth and popularity, or oppose them as a destabilising force.

In West Bengal, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) may have touched rock bottom in terms of its electoral performance in the just concluded Kolkata Municipal polls. Yet some people take Dilip Ghosh, national vice-president, are declaring that in the next round of state-wide civic elections, the BJP would do much better, for reasons that do not exactly flatter him.

The Congress would have a very legitimate grievance against the government if former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s name was not mentioned in any civilian function to mark the 50th anniversary of India’s historic victory over Pakistan in 1971. But since Prime Minister Narendra Modi was attending the National War Memorial on December 16 to honour our defence forces for their role in securing independent India’s most decisive military victory, leading to the formation of Bangladesh, possibly the failure to mention Indira Gandhi’s name in connection with Vijay Diwas was not deliberate.

LUCKNOW: Priyanka Gandhi and her Congress party have succeeded in setting up women empowerment as prominent agenda for the assembly polls.