SOME mainstream newspapers have carried editorials announcing the demise of the CPI(M) and the Left.

DURING its five years in the central government from 2014 to 2019, BJP had not only polarised the people with a narrative of hate politics in its pursuit of Hindu Rashtra. Its economic policies had inflicted considerable harm on vast sections of India’s working people and destroyed informal sector livelihoods on a massive scale via demonetisation and a badly designed and hastily implemented GST.

ARE you a leader, or a worker or an ordinary supporter of CPI(M) or any other Left party? Then, ‘they’ are free to enjoy beating you mercilessly, even taking your life with least hesitation. They have the right to celebrate their victory by setting fire to your house, or wrecking everything inside your house, or looting the valuables of their choice from your house. They enjoy right to ransack or loot your shop, destroy your crop, cut down the plants of your rubber garden, poison your fisheries, badly damage or burn down your vehicles.

  ELECTIONS to the European Parliament which concluded on May 26 show the continuing decline of the ‘mainstream’ political parties. In these elections to elect 751 members of European Union Parliament (MEPs), the EPP (European People's Party, a centre-right grouping consisting of the Christian Democrats of Germany) won 180 MEPs with 23.8 per cent of the vote; the S&D group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats won 146 seats with 20.3 per cent of votes.

ITALIAN-US automobile major Fiat-Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) has proposed a 50:50 “merger of equals” with Renault (pronounced reno) of France which the latter, and major shareholders of both companies, have responded favourably to. If and when the merger does go through, and we shall discuss the ifs and buts later, it will create the world’s third largest auto maker behind Toyota of Japan and Volkswagen (VW) of Germany.