The effects of the lockdown were felt for the full 12 months of financial year 2020-2021 and we are still to recover from it.Over 23 crore Indians fell into poverty during the pandemic and the unemployment rate which had already reached a post 1947 high of 6% by 2018, remains there.In June 2020, the farm ordinances were promulgated during the pandemic. In September the bills were passed in Parliament without a division vote. The farmers arrived at the outskirts of Delhi at the end of November and remain there even today. The government of course has rolled back the three laws but now faces trouble on the issue of a guarantee on the Minimum Support Price. It is also apparently worried by the fallout of the agitation on its constituency especially among the farmers in western Uttar Pradesh, a state going to the polls in a few months.In January the Biden administration was sworn in, after the defeat of Modi’s friend Donald Trump in the presidential elections (other friends like Japan’s Abe have also departed). A few days after that, India lifted the 17-month Internet blockade on Kashmiris fearing pressure from Biden’s democracy.In May 2020, India was told the Chinese were aggressively moving into Ladakh. On June 15 last year the two sides clashed with clubs and stones and 20 Indian soldiers lost their lives. The situation remains tense along the border and the government suddenly made peace with Pakistan on the Line of Control and shifted tens of thousands of troops over to the China side.The problem of national security, assumed to have been solved after Balakot, was apparently not really solved at all. India’s naval alliance with the United States and two other nations (the so-called Quad) was demoted this year when the US announced a proper military naval alliance with UK and Australia in the region.
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