Editorial

The crucial Budget session is going on in Parliament. The Trump Administration is daily humiliating India and hurting India's economic interests. Even as Elon Musk and his economic empire are facing a huge backlash in the US, the Modi government is spreading out the red carpet for Musk's ventures in India. The share market is inflicting massive losses on investors in India while foreign investors are migrating to more stable and profitable markets in other countries.

Trump 2.0 has begun on a tempestuous note. Compared to the narrow margins of his 2016 victory and 2020 defeat, this time round the Trump victory was quite thumping. And since being sworn in for the second term of his Presidency, Donald Trump has lost no time to unleash his agenda like a global bully gone berserk.

It's election year in Bihar. The NDA has been in power for two decades now. Since Modi's ascent to power in Delhi, Bihar has become another 'double engine' dispensation. After recent victories in Haryana, Maharashtra and Delhi, the BJP is in a very upbeat mood about turning Bihar into another Maharashtra where the party has successfully split regional parties, including its old ally Shiv Sena, and used them as stepping stones to install a BJP-led government in the state.

On 18 February, just the day before the Supreme Court was slated to hear a petition questioning the dubious 2023 law passed by the Modi government regarding the appointment of the Chief Election Commissioner and other Election Commissioner, the Modi government used the same law to choose the successor of the outgoing CEC Rajeev Kumar and also appoint a third member of the Election Commission. The 2023 Act authorises a three-member panel headed by the Prime Minister to choose the CEC and appoint other members of the Election Commission.

The first meeting between Trump and Modi, after their respective electoral victories, is now over. While the Modi government and Godi media are busy celebrating the 'chemistry' between two 'great friends', the rest of the world is reading the real signals emanating from the Trump Administration's sundry announcements and the joint press conference and communique following the Trump-Modi meeting.

After winning thumping majorities in successive elections in 2015 and 2020, the AAP has now suffered a major defeat in 2025. A loss of nearly ten percentage points in vote share, from 53 to 43, has brought the AAP seat tally down to 22. The BJP's vote share has increased by seven percentage points from 38 to 45, causing its seat tally to jump sixfold from 8 to 48.

The periodic congregation of sadhus and ordinary believers and practitioners of various schools of Hinduism on the bank of the confluence of the rivers Ganga and Yamuna in Allahabad, now renamed Prayagraj, or in other centres like Haridwar and Ujjain, has been an age-old Hindu pilgrimage practice. While early references to the Kumbh describe it more as a philosophical event dominated by scriptural discourse and debates, over the years it metamorphosed into a riverside religious fair.

Ten years of corporate appeasement and economic mismanagement by the Modi government have pushed India into a deep economic crisis. From falling economic growth rate and relentlessly declining value of the rupee in relation to the US dollar to India's ever burgeoning import bill and soaring prices of everyday necessities, every indicator points to India's worsening economic conditions.

Mohan Bhagwat's statement describing the state-sponsored consecration of a Ram temple in the place of the demolished Babri Masjid as the defining moment of India's 'true independence' once again reminds us that the RSS view of nationalism and independence remains absolutely antithetical to the actual history and aspiration of India's freedom movement. Given the history and ideology of the RSS, such a statement by the chief of the organisation is perhaps only to be expected.

The dramatic shift in the Haryana and Maharashtra election results between the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections held just six months apart  has raised a whole set of urgent questions about the transparency and credibility of the election process. The questions have since assumed more compelling proportions in view of the government's response and disturbing revelations about the process of electoral roll finalisation in Delhi where elections are to take place on the 5th of February.