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LUCKNOW: The bhumi pujan for Ram Temple at Ayodhya on August 5 will undoubtedly boost the image of saffron clad Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath not only in India but abroad also.

Legislatures in India, both, the Parliament and the state legislatures, pass hundreds of bills each year. Each of these bills includes what is known as the “Financial Memorandum”. It’s a brief section which details out what the financial costs or implications would be on the exchequer when the bill becomes an act and comes into force. The idea behind this is to provide reliable estimates of the costs which would be incurred with the passage of the legislation concerned. It also makes the ministry in charge of the particular bill to do a certain cost-benefit analysis of the law it has proposed to be introduced and passed by the legislature.

Knowledge and labour are the two key ingredients of human civilization. They work through extensive social cooperation. Hence the terms of social cooperation will determine which sections of society mainly gains from education and labour. Knowledge is formally produced and reproduced through the education system and that makes public discussion and intervention on education so crucial. Yet, the last time we had such public action was more than a hundred years ago, during the Swadeshi movement. In fact, the leading universities and research institutions in Bengal were all set up in the wake of this education movement. These include, among others, the universities of Calcutta, Jadavpur, Viswa Bharati and institutions like the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, Bose Institute and the Indian Statistical Institute.

Since the face-off between India and China fuelled up in Ladakh, chorus for de-coupling India from China erupted to boycott Chinese products. The government has already put some barriers to the economic engagement with China, spiking security concern. It restricted Chinese FDI approval through Government route from Automatic route. It blocked 59 Chinese Apps, imposed stricter regulations for Government procurement, restricted import of colour TV (since China is the biggest exporter of it to India) and many more are in the offing.

If the BJP has been acting on a simple one line mission to pull down the Ashok Gehlot’s Congress government, it would have accomplished the task by now. But BJP’s mission is not so unpretentious. Its strategy to dethrone Gehlot has many dimensions; the primary has been the maxim to cut the veteran BJP leader Vashundhara Raje to the size.

Gains made by women in their march to equality with men (gender justice) for over two centuries have been imperiled by the Covid-19 induced pandemic. Current pandemic has exposed vulnerability of women more than their male counterparts within their homes, labour market and as frontline healthcare workers. It has increased their unpaid work as caregivers, magnified pay disparities and widened the existing gender divide with its inequalities. More than men, roughly 740 million jobs in education, healthcare, food, retail services, social assistance and hospitality, known as preserve of women globally, have been lost during the lockdown. Despite lockdown having been eased considerably, many of women’s pink collared jobs largely worked by women are yet to resume normal operations, whereas the blue collared jobs that are generally men’s areas of work in manufacturing and construction have resumed full swing.

New Delhi: U-17 World Cup captain Amarjit Singh and the lone goal scorer for the country in that tournament Jeakson Singh are now living a dream. They want that their third cousin - Kritina Devi Thounaojam – some two years younger to them, should represent India in the upcoming FIFA U-17 Women's World Cup.

The relentless rally in gold is clocking all-time highs almost on a daily basis, with all eyes focussed on when the ounce price will hit the $2,000-mark. It had already crossed 1,974 last week, rising continuously from July 20, although it seemed to have taken a breather on the opening day of the new week.

While visiting the Peace Memorial in Hiroshima, one wonders how with the knowledge of destructive power of weapons could man build and then use the nuclear arms on human population. To watch the pictures of the destruction while going around the memorial and to read the account of the loss that took place as a result of atomic bombing is a nightmarish experience. The tiny atomic bombs (as per the standards of the present day nuclear weapons) killed around 140,000 people in Hiroshima and nearly 70,000 in Nagasaki and roughly half of the deaths in each city occurred on the first day.

America today illustrates what economic distress can do to humble a proud nation. The land of democracy is facing the worst threat to the country’s basic political feature with the blow coming from none other than its highest guardian.