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The Supreme Court’s interim order on the controversial Waqf Amendments Act has created an unusual equilibrium among opposing camps, hinting at a calculated balancing act rather than a decisive intervention. While the order does not represent a full-fledged stay on the implementation of the amendments, it introduces a layer of judicial restraint that both reassures and unsettles, depending on which side one is on. It leaves the legal battlefield open, but the signs—however faint—point toward an eventual consolidation of the government’s position. By allowing the government time to marshal more robust arguments while maintaining the status quo, the court has set the stage for a more thorough examination that could eventually legitimise the amendments in question.

Informal employment in the total employment in India remains almost stagnant at around 90 per cent since 2014, according to a latest ILO report. It was worse in 2024 than the global average of 58 per cent, Asia Pacific average of 66 per cent, and worse than neighbouring countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka.

With Trump’s tariff war escalating woes to China, a new plank is established for India to be the hub for global supply chain. Caught in the crossfire of highest hike in tariff by 245 percent on import from China by Trump administration, China will lose its hegemony in supply chain. Eventually, new opportunity will open up for India to bid challenge to China as well as Vietnam - the extension of Chinese workshop.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah are striving hard to find a consensus candidate as the NDA chief minister in Bihar. , but the Mahagathbandhan has struck a major psychological blow to Modi and Shah by creating a Coordination Committee headed by the RJD leader Tejashvi Yadav, the leader of opposition in Bihar assembly. This decision of the opposition leader is in fact virtually leaves no space for any speculation about the opposition candidate for the task of CM. CPI(ML)-Liberation general secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya said the formal announcement would be met after some time. They are not in a hurry. The next meeting of the opposition leaders would take place on May 4.

Who won and who lost? The anti-waqf amendments lobby claims the government was forced to eat crow and give an undertaking to protect the status of notified and registered Waqf properties, including the all-important waqf-by-user properties. The government also had to promise not to appoint any non-Muslim to the Waqf Council or waqf boards till the final verdict.

The Supreme Court has delivered a truly historic verdict, which protects the federal principle and declares any action taken by a Governor to thwart the will of the state legislature as unconstitutional. The 414-page judgment delivered by a two-member Bench of the Supreme Court, consisting of Justice J B Pardiwala and Justice R Mahadevan, has boldly called to account the misuse of the Constitutional post by Governor R N Ravi of Tamil Nadu, who withheld assent for Bills passed by the state legislature.

Donald Trump has put off his proposed tariffs by ninety days; but countries like India have to respond to Trump’s measures whether now or after ninety days. These measures are not just an episodic act. Trump clearly threatens with tariffs any country that dares to act in a manner not approved by him; he is weaponising tariffs to assert US hegemony, quite apart from using them for economic ends like raising domestic activity and reducing the US current account deficit. We are in short witnessing a new phase of world capitalism; and for countries like India to pretend otherwise and carry on with “business as usual” would be absurd. “Business as usual” had brought great suffering to the working people of the country even in its heyday; to persist with it in the new situation will bring even greater suffering and even greater subservience to American dictates.

BHOPAL: The politics in Madhya Pradesh has got fresh heat with the confrontation between the Congress and the pro-BJP Baba Ramdev. The Congress veteran leader Digvijay Singh issued strongly worded statement against Baba Ramdev. Not only that, he went to the extent of filing a complaint against him at the police thana.

The game of political hunting, which is typically characterised in India by cases, raids, seizures, and arrests, which generally do not lead to conviction, but enable the government to pin its adversaries down for years without trial in cases registered by the Enforcement Directorate (ED), seems to be reaching its climax. The latest chargesheet alleging money laundering has been filed by ED against the Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson Sonia Gandhi, and the Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi the leader of the main opposition Congress, which has triggered a nationwide massive agitation of Congress rank and file outside ED offices on Wednesday April 16 across states terming action against Gandhis as ‘political vendetta’.

The euphoria surrounding the enactment of ten Tamil Nadu legislations without presidential assent may be short-lived. What initially seemed like a landmark assertion of state rights has now been complicated by Chief Minister M.K. Stalin’s subsequent decision to form a three-member panel under the chairmanship of retired Supreme Court Justice Kurian Joseph to study state autonomy. While the initial legislative move was celebrated as a bold stand against the overreach of the Centre and the governor’s discretionary powers, the decision to constitute a panel risks neutralising the very momentum that had been gained. In fact, it not only threatens to blunt the significance of the legislative assertion but also opens the door to a reimagining—perhaps even a restoration—of the governor’s role in ways that were recently curtailed.