THE incompetence of the Modi government is starkly visible in its handling of the current crisis. It fares even worse on the vaccine front. Its belief in the ideology of free-market capitalism is that the market will magically produce whatever we need. This is why it starved the seven public sector vaccine manufacturing units (Down To Earth: COVID-19 vaccines: Waiting for advantage India, 17 April 2021) of any support. And, it also gave the public sector vaccine, Covaxin, developed by ICMR and National Institute of Virology, to a private company, Bharat Biotech.

ON Earth Day April 22, this year, US President Joe Biden hosted a summit of world leaders to address climate change, something he had promised he would do during his presidential campaign, to once again establish US leadership on this vital global issue that former US President Trump had abandoned four years ago.

COMRADE Kakoli Khetrapal, a 52-year-old CPI(M) worker from Nabagram in East Burdwan's Jamalpur was hacked to death on Sunday, May 2nd. Trinamool Congress members, celebrating their election victory, entered her home while she was cooking and attacked her with a sharp weapon. Comrade Khetrapal died on way to the hospital.

THE G7 foreign ministers of G7 countries met in London this week and issued a joint statement painting Russia as a malicious actor and China as a bully. It had little substance in its communique, apart from ticking all the “right” boxes in its anti-China and anti-Russia campaign: Uyghur’s, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Crimea, Ukraine. It ended with arrogating to itself the mantle of being the “rules-based international order”, distinct from what the real lawful international order is, the United Nations and the Security Council.

LAST week the historic farmers’ struggle had two great events to celebrate. The first was May Day and the second was the defeat of the BJP in the assembly elections in three major states -- Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and West Bengal -- followed closely by the big setback to it in the three-tier panchayat elections in Uttar Pradesh.FARMERS HAIL BJP’S POLL DEFEATAmong lakhs of farmers whose struggle has now crossed five months, with over 400 martyrs, there has been tremendous anger building up against the BJP-RSS central government led by Modi and Shah.