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In West Bengal, the unending economic stagnation and a crippling lack of resources are making it difficult for Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to keep her populist commitments to displaced Rohingyas of Myanmar or suspected ‘illegal Bangladeshis’ in Assam.

The Reserve Bank of India has plunged headlong into a battle with the government over its independence. Last week, the RBI had a meeting of its board of directors where the government and nominee directors have reportedly strongly criticised the central bank’s handling of the liquidity squeeze following the denouement at IL&FS.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s bilateral summit with the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on October 29 has sought to significantly alter te nature of Japanese investment in India by focusing on more job oriented projects by the Japanese Medium & Small Scale units as against the investments by the large companies. Indian PM made a special appeal to the Japanese SMRs this time to seriously explore opportunities in India.

The Communist Party of India (CPI) at its National Executive Committee meeting held on October 27 and 28 decided to intensify its agitation to expose the Rafale scam and the desperate attempts made by the BJP government led by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi to use official machinery to cover up the sordid operations. The Party would be holding talks with the other opposition parties for a joint agitation throughout the country so that the misdeeds of this regime got exposed before the crucial Lok Sabha elections.

The media and political build-up was cut short abruptly. Almost laconically, CJI Ranjan Gogoi read out the order. The matter will be listed in January to decide which court and when this matter will be heard. It can be heard in January or February or May whatever.

The Lok Sabha elections for 2019 in Bihar promise to be a significant political battle between the backward and upper castes. There is simmering discontent in all the caste groups, irrespective of their class character and economic profile that the coalition governments have failed to improve their conditions. While the backward castes and dalits with leaders like Nitish Kumar, Sushil Modi, Ram Vilas Paswan etc feel that all the benefits have been conned by the upper caste people, who, however, the opposite to be true.

Not a week goes without reports about the deliberate destruction of the autonomy and robustness of the institutions critical for the Indian democracy. Last week was the turn of the Central Bureau of Investigation (‘CBI’), aka ‘caged parrot’. No one was under any illusion about CBI’s autonomy or its independence, but the events of the last week even surprised, rather shocked the known sceptics too. Though the reports of feud between the top two officials of the CBI, Alok Verma, Director of CBI, and Rakesh Asthana, Special Director, CBI, have been doing the rounds for almost a year, the matter came to a head when CBI filed a FIR against Rakesh Asthana under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 for alleged corruption in Moin Qureshi’s case on 15th October, 2018, a meat exporter who is being investigated for various offences by CBI and Enforcement Directorate (‘ED’). On 23rd October, 2018, Rakesh Asthana approached the Delhi High Court to quash the said FIR, but the High Court only directed the CBI not to take any coercive action against him till 29th October, and did not stay the investigation into the FIR.

The political storm that was brewing in Sri Lanka for quite some months under an apparently tranquil surface has now broken out in full force. In a quick succession of events, President Maithripala Sirisena has dismissed his prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and appointed Mahinda Rajapaksa in his place and “prorogued” parliament till November 16.

Official data are like audited corporate financial accounts that hide more than they reveal. Just as some of the latest top level governments statements that claims 80 percent of the mobile handsets are now manufactured in India and the country “was able to save around Rs. three trillion in cell phone import bills during the last four years”. They reveal, at best, only one side of the story. The real story is that the so-called high domestic production led to much higher telecom imports, mostly components, during this period. Records show that India’s net electronic imports increased 12 percent last year. The annualised electronic goods deficit touched some $50 billion for April-December, 2017. That was as much as 30 percent higher on a year-on-year basis.

BJP President Amit Shah Saturday arrived in Kerala, the “maiden passenger” on the “maiden flight” to the “maiden airport” in Kannur, and warned Chief Minister Pinnarayi Vijayan that “perpetrating Emergency-like atrocities” on “ready-to-wait maidens”, mothers and sisters of Kerala will be fought with all the might at the BJP’s command and nothing that Pinnarayi can do will stop the BJP.