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The democratic psyche of India must be ashamed of the government led by RSS-BJP. Their unwarranted and adamant reluctance to allow debate on communal riots in Delhi, in both houses of the Parliament speaks a lot about their abetment in the riots. The communal frenzy ignited by the ruling party and its top-ranking leaders has stolen the lives of 47 innocent people as per official reports itself. The damages it caused on the houses, shops, schools and factories are also very large. Hundreds of men, women and children in the families of the deceased, thousands who have lost houses, shops and the means of livelihood are passing through days of unexplainable pain and agony. Promises of compensation and rehabilitation for them still remain a distant dream.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: It was a capital crime that the people of Kerala would take a long time to recover from. The people of Thiruvananthapuram woke up to a normal day on March 4, 2020, little realising what was in store for them in a few hours. An altercation between private bus workers and the staff of the Kerala State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) snowballed into a major confrontation which convulsed the Kerala capital for over five hours.

In the season for global virus infection, India’s financial sector is facing the prospect of another kind of a virus. The financial intermediaries have been facing serious difficulties for the last several years, including the rising levels of non-performing assets of public sector banks and earlier last year the existential threat to the non-banking financial companies following the bankruptcy of the biggest of them.

Last week, Bernie Sanders was forecast to have a 60 per cent chance of going to the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee this summer with a plurality of pledged delegates; Joe Biden had around a 30 per cent chance. After Super Tuesday, those odds have flipped. The one constant: No one is on track to win a majority of delegates, and this contest will carry on for months. Other takeaways: turnout was up in many states, signalling trouble for Trump, but so was racist voter suppression.

After ten days of the Delhi Pogrom in which 48 persons were killed, Rahul Gandhi along with a team of his party MPs visited the riot affected areas of Delhi on March 4. He was on the mission to assuage the traumatised and ravaged psyche and feelings of the poor Delhiites. Though affected people met Rahul and narrated their problems to him, it was not clear how far he succeeded in his mission.

While most economists and analysts are exasperated over the third quarter GDP growth, the authority considered the growth a significant as it bottomed out the downswing. The Economic Affairs secretary was upbeat and asserted that it signalled for a bounce back in the growth in the successive quarters.

Donald Trump returned to the United States from India a happy man. He inked a $3-billion defence deal with New Delhi, a land which he refers to as a “tariff king”. And all this after the US has terminated India from its Generalised System of Preferences (GSP).

Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak in China and its spread in other 48 countries has caused considerable human suffering and economic disruption. Its impact is felt around the world. Even on the presumption of its being mild and contained, it is likely to hit Indian economy hardest, even more than China. Though the world GDP outlook has been revised downward by 0.5 per cent compared to last assessment in November just before the outbreak, the interim report ‘Coronavirus: The World Economy at Risk’ of OECD has projected the fall for India by 1.1 per cent, even worse than China’s 0.8 per cent. Sharp rise in unemployment in India is its reflection which has reached 8 percent as per CMIE’s assessment of March 3, 2020, higher than 45 years high of 6.1 per cent in January last year. With deepening economic crisis, further rise in unemployment is inevitable. Rural areas are to suffer more than the urban areas.

New Delhi: Displaying awesome fighting qualities Ashish Kumar (75kg) knocked out the fourth seed Bekzhigit Uulu Omurbek of Kyrgyzstan 5-0 while another Indian Manish Kaushik thrashed Chinese Taipei’s Lai Chu-En by the same scoreline to move into the quarter-finals of the Asian/Oceanian Olympic Qualifiers in Amman, Jordan today.

Kalyani: Hero I-League leaders Mohun Bagan were held to a 1-1 draw by defending Champions Chennai City at the Kalyani Municipality Stadium earlier today.