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With inviting request from private operators for qualification for Rs 30,000 crore mega private trains project, Modi government has taken yet another step for privatization of the Indian Railways. The bait being ‘faster-more comfortable-world class travel’ as a bargain for getting support from the people who have been hitherto depending on this national carrier for affordable travel and goods-transport. Since the single motive of private investors is profit making, the move will increase the costs of rail services to the nation, and also the majority of the people who need to go to distant places for livelihood, medications, pilgrimages, and so on.

One question that unswervingly and consciously continues to haunt is why the Modi government has been desperate to destroy the democratic institutions of the country and its laws. The plausible answer obviously is as these are stumbling blocks in its path to transform India into a Hindu Rashtra, the government would not like keep on the statute books or have them in place.

COVID-19 has serious implications on agriculture, rural employment, and food security. Policy responses in relation to COVID-19 outbreak include several agriculture policies, agro-food supply chain policies, consumer policies, trade policies and others. However, much more are needed to overcome the crisis it has presented. Moreover, the legacy of problems cannot be left unsolved now without aggravating the agriculture crisis with the new COVID-19 twist and the largest number of stomachs in the world to feed within seven years.

Recent events in the south Asian region are upsetting and worrisome and these require statesmanship to wriggle out. There has been perpetual tension between Pakistan and India which has led to immense wasteful expenditure on arms race thus marring development in the two countries and adversely affecting health and education in particular. With some periods of thaw, most of the time, the two countries have been engaged in cold or hot war. There have been four full-fledged wars in addition to skirmishes at the border from time to time.

How valid is the assumption about Narendra Modi’s popularity? The BJP’s losses in the assembly elections of 2015 and 2016 underlined the ephemeral nature of its 2014 general election. Within a year of that success, the BJP lost in Delhi and Bihar and, in 2016, it lost in West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry. In the following year, the BJP lost Punjab and, in 2018, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. A year later, the BJP lost Maharashtra, Haryana and Jharkhand and then Karnataka in 2019.

Years ago, Bengal’s Marxist Chief Minister Jyoti Basu once asked one of his close business friends, Jit Paul of the Apeejay group: ‘what is the surest way to create employment fast?’ To this, Paul’s simple suggestion was: ‘create as many employers as fast as possible. They will automatically generate employment.’ As the head of a multi-party Left Front government, Jyoti Basu was aware of his limitation to promote such a pro-employer policy and did not discuss the subject further with other close business friends like industrialist Rama Prasad Goenka and Tata Steel’s Russi Mody. Few governments in the world have appreciated such a simple logic more than Communist China, especially since the time of its ‘paramount leader’ in the 1980s, Deng Xiaoping.

Ministry of Labour and Employment (MoLE) started working on National Vocational Qualification Framework (NVQF), sometimes in 2011-12. It constituted a committee of stakeholders under the chairmanship of Secretary Labour and Employment, which included representatives from Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD). In the meantime MHRD took an independent route and notified implementation of National Vocational Educational Qualification Framework (NVEQF) in September 2012. When MoLE and MHRD could not align, the matter was reported to Prime Minister’s Office. In a meeting between Principal Secretary to PMO (Shri Pulok Chatterjee), Secretary Labour and Employment (Dr Mrutyunjay Sarangi) and Special Secretary MHRD (Shri Ashok Thakur), National Skill Qualification Framework (NSQF) was conceptualized as an alternative nomenclature. Perhaps this committee is referred as Inter-Ministerial Committee in NSQF notification. National Skill Development Agency (NSDA) was proposed to anchor the NSQF.

Jawaharlal Nehru could not carry out the Gandhian advice but his descendents provided grounds to halt the polluted Ganges from flowing down by reducing the Congress to immaterial force in national political arena.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Kerala’s worst fears, voiced by both Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and Health Minister K K Shailaja, appear to be coming true.

Beauty lay in the eyes of the beholder. Post-Covid, not any longer. Beauty now lies hidden behind masks and inside protective gloves.