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After getting assured that the Sangh Parivar has got what it wanted on the Ayodhya issue, the Narendra Modi government has intensified new attacks on the basic structure of the Indian Constitution. In the last fortnight, the government officially floated the idea of handing over the most part of the acquired land around Babri Masjid and got approval from its supporters. Not much surprising, the so called secular forces too kept mum or endorsed the idea.

The die is cast. There is no escape route for the Prime Minister Narendra Modi to come out unscathed from the Rs. 58,000 crore Rafale scam. The report in The Hindu newspaper of February 8 makes it abundantly clear that it was the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) which conducted the crucial negotiations for finalisng the deal relating to the purchase of 36 Rafale jets from the French company Dassault overruling the prolonged negotiations carried out by the Defence Ministry and also the PMO finalized the deal by ignoring serious objections made by the Defence Ministry.

A specter is haunting Donald Trump—the specter of socialism. A century and a half ago, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels opened their Communist Manifesto with a similar line. In their time, it was the rising workers’ movement and communist groups of Europe that were putting the ruling class on notice across the continent.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: In politics, as in life, what matters the most is perception. And the perception fast gaining ground in Kerala is that the Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB) has, once again, succumbed to the pressure of the Left Democratic Front(LDF) on the sensitive Sabarimala issue.

LUCKNOW: Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee is all set to organise show of strength through road show as and when Priyanka Gandhi Vadra arrives Lucknow on February 10-11. Congress is preparing to organise grand reception of Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on her arrival to Lucknow to take charge of Easter UP for 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

Why has the Commissioner of Kolkata police Rajeev Kumar suddenly acquired the importance in the political establishment of Delhi as well as Calcutta is really intriguing. Rajeev is supposed to be an intelligent and no-nonsense person. But this is certainly not the reason that everybody should be after him. What has been the reason that Mamata Banerjee, who after coming to power in 2011 was reluctant to retain him, hit the Calcutta street on Sunday to protect him from questioning by the CBI.

In his Interim Budget presented on 1 February 2019, the stopgap Finance Minister Mr. Piyush Goyal announced a scheme for a monthly pension of Rs. 3000 for unorganised workers whose numbers he put at 42 crore. The workers in the age-group of 18 to 55 years would get this pension upon attaining the age of 60 after paying a monthly premium depending upon the duration for which they pay. For instance, a worker who starts paying at the age of 29 would pay Rs. 100 per month for 31 years and a worker who starts paying at the age of 18 would pay Rs. 55 and after 42 years he/she would get Rs. 3000 per month.

Medium, Small and Micro Enterprises (MSMEs) are a major engine of growth and employment in the country, only next to Agriculture. However, lakhs of them have already closed due to cash crunch after demonetization order of November 2016. Majority of the units have been struggling for survival with additional burden after introduction of GST in July 2017. They required some urgent measures for revival, but the Budget 2019-20 has frustrated their hope. The claimed ‘all-time high allocation’ of Rs 7011 crore to the Ministry is too small an amount to handle the crisis the sector has been thrown into by the Modi government in their policy experiments.

Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro ruled out new presidential elections as he called on the international community to prevent a US-instigated civil war from erupting in the country.

None other than Gen. Austin Miller, the head of NATO’s Resolute Support Mission, stated ingenuously that in Afghanistan “this is not going to be won militarily… This is going to a political solution”. He put it bluntly that the USA and its armed collaborators had failed to secure even their economic interests and instead murdered thousands of people. As a result, the mess that they created over 16 years or so, it will become extremely difficult for Afghanistan to come back to any kind of normalcy in near future. The option was to be out of Afghanistan. And as soon as possible.