As the Bay of Bengal experiences more frequent cyclones, villages devastated by the ingress of saline water are becoming attractive sights for private businessmen interested in expanding commercial shrimp aquafarming.

The eviction drive that happened in September 2021 in the Dholpur char area in the Darrang district of Assam by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government ended with the killing of two people by police. The purported illegal occupation of these lands by the so-called miyas of the erstwhile Eastern Bengal origin Muslim population comes as the perfect defense in continuing the eviction drives in various parts of Assam.

In January 2022, the Government of India proposed an amendment to the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) cadre rules, 1954, which would allow the Union government to command the services of an IAS officer in the “central” government overriding consent (as required by current rules) from the State government or the concerned bureaucrat. The proposal fast became a flashpoint in the center-state battleground. The amendments, State governments are arguing, fundamentally undermine the federal spirit embedded in the design of the All India Services (AIS).

In January 2022, Kunwar Ratanjit Pratap Narain Singh (RPN Singh), a former member of parliament (MP) with the Congress Party, defected and joined Congress’ archrival, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). But this wasn’t any ordinary party member. Singh had been a member of legislative assembly (MLA) many times with Congress, a union minister with the party, a former president of its youth wing, and was perceived to be close to former Congress president Rahul Gandhi.

It has been a volatile decade for India’s business community. Quite a few post-liberalization patterns of doing business in India have been seriously disrupted, and with it have withered the  fortunes of many business owners who had made their bets early as India opened up its economy over thirty years ago.

India’s post-colonial constitution introduced a new approach to federalism which was qualified at the time—and has been since—as a diminished or “quasi” form of federalism. India’s federalism was qualified, so the argument went, because it moved away from the idea that federal and regional governments should each have independence in their own sphere of authority, and because it gave the Central government strong prerogatives to interfere in the affairs of States.

Farmers who have been protesting on Delhi’s borders since November 26, 2020 recently suspended their protests against the three farm legislations the Modi government claimed would reform India’s agriculture sector. Taken together, these laws—repealed during the ongoing winter Parliament session—intended to relax regulations regarding the purchase, sale, and stocking of agricultural products and enable written agreement-based contract farming in India.