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Dr Manmohan Singh, primarily an economist who was thrust into the position of a politician late in life, has offered sane advice to the Modi government to come out of the current economic crisis. In doing so, he was playing the role of a senior statesman.

The following examples demonstrate the tardy manner in which National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam has been undertaken. On August 31, the state government released the final list of NRC who left out 19.5 lakh people. As many as 3.29 crore had applied for NRC. The second draft of the list, released in July 2018, had excluded from the list 40 lakh people because they supposedly “could not prove” their Indian citizenship. In June, this year another one lakh were excluded from the list. More than 41 lakhs were on the verge of statelessness.

The Constitution of India guarantees safety of life and property, but both are unsafe in the hands our current government in the helm of affairs. To ease the miseries of the people, several private national and international philanthropist individuals and organisations are working. Indian philanthropic contribution has surpassed the international contribution with the enforced Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), but it too is in great disarray. Philanthropic help is not reaching the people who need it most. Spread of the activities is uneven and is mostly centred in only few relatively developed states. The help is also limited to only a few areas. There is a lack of coordination among the philanthropists. Many of them are doing the same thing while most other areas are ignored. The worst is, its linkage with the strategies centred more around saving taxes than helping the needy.

Tussles over health care dominated the discussion as the ten leading Democratic presidential hopefuls debated each other before a boisterous crowd in Houston on September 12.

BHOPAL: Perhaps to take advantage of the division in the ruling Congress in Madhya Pradesh, the main opposition BJP has taken to the path of confrontation. As a part of this strategy, the BJP launched a campaign called ‘Ghantanaad’ (ringing of bells to wake up the government). The BJP workers all over the state tried to draw the people’s attention to the failures of the Kamal Nath government by ringing bells. Police resorted to use of force to disperse agitating BJP government and arrested them.

In India, for the first time, the extreme rightist forces have been elected to power with promises to serve the people’s cause. The shift represents a new stage in the old garb. Democracy has been perishing slowly in the hands of autocracy. ‘Divide and rule’ has been the wake up call to communalism, and that nourishes majoritarianism, an enemy from within, destroying all the institutions that help evolve the democratic ethos. Finance capital has been rooting itself under many wraps.

The Russian space agency has signed an agreement with India to launch an Indian earth imaging satellite. Recently, space collaboration has become high on the agenda of India and Russia.

Britain’s version of Donald Trump, right-wing Prime Minister Boris Johnson, was handed a major defeat Monday when his second try at calling an election to solve the Brexit mess was rebuffed.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: A terrible tragedy is in the making at Marad, a non-descript town in Ernakulam district of Kerala.

Eighty-two thousand permanent defence civilian employees and 40,000 contract workers of the 41 Indian Ordnance Factories went on an unprecedented total strike from August 20 to 25, 2019. The three federations of defence civilian employees — All India Defence Employees Federations (AIDEF), Indian National Defence Workers Federation (INDWF), Bharatia Pratiraksha Mazdoor Sangh (BPMS) — gave a clarion call to the civilian employees of Ordnance Factories to go for a one month strike against the 100 days agenda formulated by the Modi-02 government to convert the 218 years-old Ordnance Factories into a corporation/ public sector.