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This week, at a G-7 conference, India reaffirmed its commitment to democracy in a joint statement. The statement, which India has signed, says, “We are at a critical juncture, facing threats to freedom and democracy from rising authoritarianism, electoral interference, corruption, economic coercion, manipulation of information including disinformation, online harms and cyber-attacks, politically-motivated internet shutdowns, human rights violations and abuses, terrorism and violent extremism.”

Former professor and chair at the Department of History at Delhi University specialising in ancient and medieval history, D N Jha consistently called out what he saw as distortions of Indian history.

Nicaragua is holding its general elections on November 7 this year but the tempo of the poll campaign has already hotted up in the wake of the recent victory of the left candidates in parliamentary elections in Mexico and presidential elections in Peru. This small Latin American country will be the fourth one in the region which will go for Presidential elections in 2021. Honduras will be the fifth and the last country in the region to elect its president on November 27.

Revolt has much wider connotation and it has got an ideological implication. Actually the five Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) members of parliament severing their relationship with the party and later replacing Chirag Paswan as the party president by Pashupati Paras the younger brother of Ram Vilas Paswan, is more like a family opera.

With the announcement of results from the June 6 Mexican midterm elections, the centre-left MORENA Party has held onto its federal congressional majorities in the Chamber of Deputies and won state and local elections across the country in 31 states and Mexico City. MORENA (Movimiento Regeneración Nacional) is the party of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (known by his initials, AMLO) who is in the middle of his single six-year term. HE was elected president in 2018.

Rajesh Ravi, a 42-year-old auto-rickshaw driver in Thiruvananthapuram, the capital city of Kerala, could earn only Rs. 400 in the last 30 days.

Dr Larry Brilliant, an epidemiologist who helped the WHO eradicate smallpox in the last century says “it’s too late to hope for herd immunity” against Covid-19 and, therefore, the novel coronavirus can be called the “forever virus”, something that wouldn’t sit well with most of us. Dr Brilliant predicts a “long fight” with the coronavirus variants, many of which are in the womb of the future.

LUCKNOW: Enthused by the recent success in panchayat polls which showed the mood of rural voters, Akhilesh Yadav is preparing for Mission 2022 to take on Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and BJP to capture power. Akhilesh Yadav is in aggressive mood to enter alliances with smaller parties to enlarge the support base to emerge as biggest party after the elections.

Revolt in Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) has signaled a churning in Bihar politics the final outcome of which may not only impact the political fortunes of the party but also of the BJP and JD(U) individually and NDA as a whole, which may also present an opportunity to the RJD led opposition to play some deft political moves of regional importance in Bihar and Jharkhand as well as national significance.

Both the Congress party and the BJP – the two main national parties- are facing internal problems in the states where they rule. The basic difference between the two parties is the Congress is on the decline while the BJP is growing to replace Congress in its heydays.