IT is eight years since Narendra Modi became prime minister of India, heading an NDA government. The BJP is observing this anniversary in a big way, combining it with their election campaign for some state assembly elections due later this year, Gujarat being one of the important ones. The ruling party organised a meeting of all its national and state office bearers recently in Jaipur where a long statement narrating various achievements of the Modi government was issued.

THE “State of Inequality in India Report”, by the economic advisory council to the prime minister (EAC-PM), was released on May 18, 2022. The report prepared by the government body itself has highlighted that while the top 10 per cent of the Indian population accounts for one-third of all incomes earned, the income share of self-employed workers who are also the highest in number among the whole employed categories (45.78 per cent), happens to be the lowest.

INDIANS are being crushed by a deadly combination of economic policies that have led to mass unemployment, low wages – and the most destructive of all – runaway price rise. These policies have bulldozed family budgets causing people to cut down on food and other essentials, curtail spending on education of children or care of sick.

WHILE prime minister Modi was, as usual, busy inaugurating projects in poll-bound Gujarat and visiting Europe, retail prices of another essential food item, wheat flour or atta have reached their highest level. According to data collected from across the country by the central government’s department of consumer affairs, average atta prices have increased from Rs 28.80 per kilogram in May 2021 to Rs 32.91 in May 2022.

The more things change, the more they remain the same, said French writer and critic Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr

NOTHING can be more apt in describing the situation arising out of the unfortunate incident of the denial of boarding on an IndiGo flight to a teenager with a disability at the Ranchi airport on May 8, 2022.