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Global investors hailed China’s new Foreign Investment Law (FIL) a breakthrough to resuscitate the Chinese sagging foreign investment, even though many commentators are dubious on actual implementation. Foreign investment has been an important boost for Chinese economy.

Despite the fact that senior citizens have contributed through their life to the nation’s building, healthcare for them remains a big challenge. The National Health Policy recognizes growing need for palliative and rehabilitative care for all geriatric illnesses and advocates the continuity of care across all levels. The question however is how all this is going to be met with. The Ayushman Bharat has serious limitations. It provides healthcare coverage to only 40 per cent of the population, that too for indoor care only. This means 60 per cent of the population is left out of this insurance scheme of five lakh rupees for a family. It is also a well-known fact that 70 per cent of the out of pocket expenditure on health is on outpatient care. This is applicable more to the geriatric group because a person in this age group is faced with the diseases of chronic nature, for which he/she has to pay frequent visits to the outpatient clinics.

India needs to manage water for 17 per cent population of the world but has only 4 per cent of world’s freshwater resources. Though annual utilizable water is 690 BCM from surface water sources and 447 BCM from groundwater, water supply is so mismanaged that about two lakh people die every year due to inadequate water, sanitation and hygiene. The burden of unsafe water on individual is 40 times higher than in China, and 12 times higher than even Sri Lanka. With huge amount of waste water generated annually, mismanagement of waste water contaminating both surface and ground water, lack of liquid waste management, the poor sanitation conditions and habits contributed a significant portion of population suffering from water-borne diseases.

Congress President Sonia Gandhi’s comeback as the party chief recently might have shut up the young and old in the party about who should replace Rahul Gandhi, but she has her task cut out. It is more than a fortnight since she took over. It is not as if Sonia does not know the problems and challenges ahead as she has been the president of the party for almost two decades and has seen its highs and lows. In 1998, she took over the party when it was at its lowest ebb with many Congress leaders leaving the party, but she was able to arrest the tendency. She even brought the party back to power in 2004 and also in 2009. Once again Sonia has taken the leadership when the party is totally demoralized after its humiliating defeat in the 2019 polls and once again there is erosion of party workers and leaders. But 2019 is not 1998.

NEW DELHI: New Delhi and Moscow are negotiating the organisation of the India-based production of semi-cryogenic rocket engines using Russian technology for the South Asian country’s space programme, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Chairman Kailasavadivoo Sivan said in an interview.

Leaders of the Congress are the worst enemies of their own party. They never treated the Congress as a political party. It has been a conglomerate of diverse ideas. For them it has been merely a contraption to rule and they have been born to rule India. And to rule it is imperative that Congress must get majority as laid out by the constitution. While some nurse Gandhism as the ideological contour of the Congress, for others it is committed to secular, centrist, socialism and liberal ethos. There is general feeling in the Congress leaders that Congress is in fact a centrist idea close to the heart of most of the Indians.

In Bengal, a deceptive stability prevails in the post Lok Sabha poll period, with a persistent undercurrent of law and order disruptions. The ruling Trinamool Congress(TMC) and its main challenger Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP) are keyed into a frenzied party rebuilding exercise, looking ahead to the high stakes 2021 Assembly elections. Their tactics present a contrast: responding to fresh challenges, the TMC has resorted to a defensive, holding operation, while the BJP, currently quiescent, is expected to shift gears soon.

Few would remember Arun Jaitley as India’s commerce and industry minister. As of now, that’s a longtime ago. But for those who knew him in those days, it was clear he was the man of the future.

Deleting Article 370 was the easy part. The state’s muscle power and the mobilization of parties outside the NDA which are eager to curry favour with the powerful ruling party at the centre enabled the government to impose its writ on Kashmir valley with the people held incommunicado.

It may be the right time to think ‘out of the box’ to solve the current problem of economic meltdown. Small sops to the business community and foreign investors are going to tackle the recession and move the economy northward. Only massive ongoing long-term investments in mega projects, carrying long gestation period, can handle the problem by generating large employment and income to revitalise the market. Fresh large employment and income will automatically grow expenditure and demand. Profit-driven, small-purse private enterprises can’t handle such investments. Only the state can.