COMPLAINTS of large-scale irregularities have emerged in the electoral roll of the Pilibhit Sadar Assembly constituency in Uttar Pradesh. It is alleged that names were changed while the EPIC number and serial number were retained. Irregularities involving 13,150 names have come to light in this case. The matter surfaced after the completion of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR).

LAST week, some rather bizarre events took place that point to a dire and dangerous direction India is heading to. Marco Rubio, US Secretary of State (their foreign minister), landed in Mumbai, held a flurry of meetings and headed off to Jamnagar, “to meet the folks at Reliance”, as Sergio Gor, US Ambassador to India put it. Rubio skipped New Delhi altogether, explaining the trip as being ‘business-oriented’.

THE week before October 25 in Brazil was frenetic. It appeared that every one of the over 200 million Brazilians had a political opinion about the presidential election. The country was fundamentally polarised. Polls showed that the vote was going to be tight, with most polls favouring the challenger Flávio Bolsonaro, son of the former president Jair Bolsonaro, and the standard bearer of the far right of a special type.

The one area of social life which neofascism specifically, single-mindedly, and shamelessly seeks to destroy is education. It is not just a question of ignoring education, or privatizing it and starving it of public funds; it is a case of deliberate, wilful destruction.

SEVEN years after August 2019, Jammu and Kashmir has an elected government, a functioning Assembly and regular official assurances that the situation is normal. On September 28, the Assembly passed a resolution asking the Government of India to do what it had promised long ago, which is to restore full statehood. The fact that the House had to ask again, two years after the people voted, says a good deal about where things stand.