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The shrinking job market is becoming an increasing concern for the country’s millions of students studying at home and abroad with education loans. Also concerned are those unemployed youth who had finished education with the support of bank loans that they are unable to return. The equally concerned are the guardians of the students, offering collateral for such loans. Banks are facing huge loan defaults. Interestingly, most of the education loans come from state-owned banks. The collateral is something pledged as security for repayment of loan, to be forfeited in the event of a default. Banks are increasingly finding it difficult to recover education loans from defaulters, genuine or wilful.

The massive rally organized in Kolkata’s Brigade Parade Ground on Saturday by the West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee to demonstrate the unity of the opposition parties for unseating Prime Minister Narendra Modi led government in the coming Lok Sabha poll, has set the right tone to take forward the Mission 2019 of the opposition for making the centre BJP-mukta after the April/May elections.

The ‘mahagathbandhan’ is in place. There is also the ‘gathbandhan’. And don’t forget the ‘federal front’. The first and third overlap, they say. The question then is ‘What now?’ Mamata Banerjee and Mayawati, if one is ambition, the other is Mayavi. The day Brigade Ground in Kolkata paraded opposition to Narendra Modi, what did not go amiss was who among the leaders of the opposition parties is top-gun, if using the term ‘PM Face’ is politically incorrect in this context.

Job market is worsening in India. Government employment is shrinking and employability of our youth waning in view of the country reeling under shortages of quantitative quality higher education with worsening employment in the informal sector of economy, knocked down completely by ill-conceived disastrous demonetisation and impractical hasty implementation of the well thought out Goods and Services Tax. This has been abated further by changes in the calculation formulae of Price Indices and GDP, with no correlation with ground reality, compounded further by suppression of employment data by the NDA Union Government.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Pinarayi Vijayan-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) government has been lurching from blunder to blunder on the highly sensitive Sabarimala issue.

BHOPAL: Chief Minister Kamal Nath has ordered a high level enquiry into the sordid affairs of Makhan Lal Chaturvedi National Journalism University. The enquiry committee is headed by M. Gopal Reddy, additional chief secretary, and has Bhupendra Gupta, public relations. officer on special duty in the office of the chief minister, and Sandeep Dixit, former MP from New Delhi, as members.

RJD leader Tejashvi Yadav dashing to Lucknow for meeting SP chief Akhilesh Yadav and BSP chief Mayawati and asserting that this alliance would wreck the ship of BJP in the 2019 elections has caused uneasiness in Congress. The Lucknow meetings have given rise to the feeling that Tejashvi was also not comfortable with Congress. It is believed that he has refrained from airing his views only for the sake of his father, who is in favour of a strong relation with Congress.

The credibility of the Supreme Court was considered to be at the lowest ebb during the tenure of chief justice Dipak Misra. The so-called ‘mutiny’ by the four senior-most judges was described as the darkest hour of Indian judiciary, amidst allegations of the CJI misusing his Master of the Roster powers to constitute ‘pliable’ benches ready to do the bidding of interested parties, planting serious doubt in the minds of people about the integrity of the institution. Justice Misra has even been accused by a retired colleague of having behaved like an ‘agent’ of some external force, which the judge stopped short of identifying, but the reference was quite obvious.

With every passing day there are new innovations in the field of medicine. New drugs and devices are coming out. It is therefore important for the medical professionals to be regularly updated through continued medical education (CME) programs. Academic bodies hold their annual national meets as well as state and local CMEs. As the advancement is very rapid, the number of such events has increased manifold in the past few years. Various state councils made it mandatory for the medical professionals to attend such CMEs and obtain credit hours for renewing the registration. The medical council also gave broad guidelines about organizing such events. The clause 1.2.3 of the Indian Medical Council (Professional Conduct, Etiquette & Ethics) Regulations, 2002 states ‘A physician should participate in professional meetings as part of Continuing Medical Education programmes for at least 30 hours every five years, organized by reputed professional academic bodies or any other authorized organization. The compliance of this requirement shall be informed regularly to Medical Council of India or the State Medical Council as the case may be’.

The Kerala government has ‘51’ reasons to hang its head in shame. And Pinarayi Vijayan is the ‘head’. The only place Vijayan can hide is Pinarayi, the village with the rock that delivered CPM. Friday, Pinarayi Vijayan was on a slippery slope. He is atheist who contracted the job to get converts to the Hindu-fold and never in history have so many godless shown such devotion to lay obeisance at the feet of Swami Ayyappa than under Pinarayi.