What do we look for this week?

Dear Samadrusti Readers,

We are presenting our page in English with a gist on major national and international happenings. Sambhab of the Central University of Hyderabad has prepared this. The links which you need to click to learn more are given below. We thank Sambhab for his efforts. – Editor

This week, we saw the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, giving rise to the international banking crisis, tied with the rise of chatbots and artificial intelligence software like GPT – 4 which promises to improve efficiency in workplaces essentially leading to the death of hundreds of jobs and pushing thousands of people into unemployment. This comes with France’s president Macaroon raising the age limit for retirement from 62 to 64 and making 43 years of mandatory service for guaranteed pension benefits from the state. While French unionized militant workers are protesting against their government, India is quite silent on when it comes to abolishing of the death penalty or legalising same-sex marriage, which would provide queer community legal benefits and a life of dignity. India’s priorities seem to have been to launch a pre-globalization era cola drink (campa cola) with Mukesh Ambani kickstarting its funding. While we are failing economically – our investment in the public sector is at an all-time low while private sector investments are down, our primary focus has been to discuss whether to scrap Rahul Gandhi’s Lok Sabha membership. Meanwhile, we took a “rational decision” by dismissing compensation for the victims of the Bhopal Gas tragedy. Also, it’s not all bad rather, we do have new hopes to seek, too – the international criminal court has issued an arrest warrant against war criminal Putin, and we also saw China brokering a peace deal between Saudi and Iran (helping India in its “newly ventured/portrayed” anti-west anti-Europe non-dependency foreign policy), and we did get to see Sarmila Bose’s letter which was written to Jewish organisations where she apologises for her grandfather’s (Subash Bose) SILENCE on Jewish Holocaust carried out by Nazi party. Before we get too hopeful, climate scientists recently produced a paper warning that we are on the brink of collapse if we don’t act soon (the infamous point of no return is closer than ever). This week has been a rollercoaster for democracy advocacy and human rights activist groups. The new Freedom House research has warned us that globally we are lower than ever on the democratic index scale. The fate of global politics and Indian politics is linked with two major questions: the starting of major international banking crises and the rise of authoritarian politics. To tackle these questions, we largely need the involvement of civil society groups in policy-making, which is far from happening.

From 9^th March to 20^th March