Insights, a blog published by IMPRI.
After being elected as Shimla's deputy mayor, I first removed the red and green lights outside the office. This ensured no-hindrance access to the office for the town's people to the office. Thus, promoting a culture of high accessibility that has existed in the state of Himachal Pradesh right since its formative days. Even the earlier chief ministers would meet the people directly, ensuring a better dialogue with them.
Whichever way one looks at it, the promise by select state governments and political parties to return to the Old Pension System for Government employees is a freebie of the kind that Prime Minister Narendra Modi referred to as Revadi. It is not affordable. It is not targeted at the deserving. It is not productive. It creates a terrible precedent. It ought to carry the following “health” warnings: disastrous for state finances, additional liabilities for future taxpayers and detrimental to the economic well-being of the majority.
Under Rahul Gandhi’s inspired leadership, the Congress has officially entered the Zombie zone, turning itself into the living dead. The party has retaken Himachal Pradesh and some Muslim-dominated wards in Delhi. It is winning a by-election in Chhattisgarh, as well. Sure, these signs of life matter.
President Xi Jinping is visiting Saudi Arabia from December 7-10 for his second bilateral visit to the Kingdom since 2016, when he visited Cairo and Tehran as well in an epoch-making and biggest-ever Chinese diplomatic initiative in the Arab world.
On December 1, India assumed the presidency of the highly influential global grouping of major world economies- G20 from Indonesia for one year.
China will exit Zero Covid and freezing Europe will force Ukraine to sue for peace.
In Europe, where anger against high prices has triggered political upheavals, leading to the mainstreaming of right-wing politics in Italy, Sweden, and France, strikes for higher wages that promise to entrench inflation and depress growth, and persistent demands for fuel subsidies. This spells the beginning of the end of the war in Ukraine.
The sensible thing for India to do is to keep buying Russian crude, set up a BRICS Re to offer reinsurance to those who insure the safe passage of Russian crude without price caps to wherever it is welcome, and to keep engaging both sides in the Ukraine war