BY deciding to contest a second seat from Wayanad constituency in Kerala, the Congress president Rahul Gandhi has taken a wrong turn.  The argument set out by senior Congress leaders, while making this announcement, was that it is important that the Congress president fight from the South also.

HISTORY is repeating itself with the United States dictating whom India should buy oil from. The US had forced India to drastically reduce buying oil from Iran after it imposed unilateral sanctions on Iranian oil trade last year.  Now, the US is back to the business of coercing India to stop buying oil from Venezuela on whom it has imposed illegal sanctions. The Modi government, after having bound itself into the strategic ties with the imperialist superpower, is unable to act in the national interests.

THE promise of the Modi government to double farm incomes by 2022 seems to be a cruel joke on farmers who are suffering the reverse - a steady decline in farm incomes. The Central Statistics Office has added credence to the allegations of the peasantry that the last five years have seen continuously low incomes. CSO figures show that farm income growth crashed to the lowest in 14 years in the last quarter of 2018 (October-December).

THE aerial strike on a Jaish-e-Mohammed run camp in Balakot in Pakistan was conducted to send an effective message that India will not tolerate terrorist attacks such as in Pulwama, sponsored from across the border.  The extent of the success of the operation, in terms of destroying the militant base, is yet to be established.  The reputed international defence monitoring media agency, Jane’s Information Group, has termed the claims about the operation’s success as “speculative”.