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BHOPAL: On the eve of completion of six months of his government Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Kamal Nath has suggested an unique formula to defeat BJP’s design to destablise his government. In a letter addressed to Sonia Gandhi, Kamal Nath has requested her to facilitate six vacancies in his cabinet. This can be done if three factional leaders ask their two nominees each to voluntarily quit the ministry. The three factional leaders are Digvijaya Singh, Jyotiraditya Scindia and Kamal Nath himself.

The last general election has had one beneficial fallout. It has set at rest some myths and the unreal expectations of at least two political prima donnas. One fanciful idea that has been given a decent burial is that Priyanka Gandhi Vadra represents a new Indira Gandhi with her dazzling beauty and popular appeal.

From presidential hopefuls to peace groups to 86,125 people signing an anti-war petition – so far – the latest Iran war threat concocted by President Trump has ignited a firestorm of criticism and opposition.

The word socialism is on everyone’s lips these days. On the far right, President Donald Trump, worried about the threat of higher marginal tax rates and health care for all, roars that “America will never be a socialist country!”

Creating the image of a victim of the conspiracy and machination of the BJP is not going to help reclaim the situation for West Bengal chief minister, Mamata Banerjee. The situation arising out of post doctor—patient party clash simply reinforces the image of a beleaguered state waiting for major surgical strike.

Analysts are discounting the sudden spike in the price of oil after two tankers were attacked in the Gulf of Oman off the coast of Iran as a knee-jerk reaction and insisting that it warrants no change in the price outlook, which is negative for the producers.

The BJP has acted wisely in asking its party leaders to refrain from toppling Congress governments in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Karnataka and Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress in West Bengal. The BJP leaders of these states were guided by the strong attack made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP President Amit Shah during the abrasive campaigning against the non-NDA chief ministers like Mamata, H D Kumaraswamy of Karnataka and Delhi’s Arvind Kejriwal. Modi and Shah had even said that many opposition leaders were ready to switch sides.

Invoking the “unfinished business” of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal, Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders laid out a comprehensive “democratic socialist” platform of an “Economic Bill of Rights” to benefit the entire country, rather than the oligarchs, right-wing politicians, and corporate elite at the top.

As was expected the Reserve Bank of India’s monetary policy committee (MPC) on June 6, 2019 lowered its interest rate by 0.25 percentage points to 5.75 per cent, the third such reduction since February. With the MPC already indicating in the last two policies that inflation would not be the only factor that would drive the decision on interest rate changes, it is not really a surprise that the RBI has gone in for a rate cut, especially after rather disappointing numbers have come out on gross domestic product (GDP) growth in the fourth quarter and unemployment rate.

July 19, 2019 will mark the 50th anniversary of bank nationalisation. Fifty years ago, in the year 1969, it was on this historic date of July 19, the government brought the Ordinance nationalising the 14 major private banks in our country. Since then the banks have chartered a new course linking banking industry with the overall national economic development. Shedding their baggage of class banking, banks transitioned to mass banking and became effective instrument of economic transformation. Banks became the engine of basic economic growth and development.