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A feature of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s career is that he has been consistently lucky. Even after being labelled as a “modern-day Nero” by the Supreme Court in the wake of the 2002 Gujarat riots which claimed 1,200 lives, he had little difficulty in winning the assembly elections in the state.

The Congress party has gone back to the tried and tested leadership of Sonia Gandhi by electing her again as the leader of its Parliamentary party in its hour of crisis. Calling it “unprecedented crisis”, Sonia herself acknowledged the numerous challenges confronting the Congress party. Claiming several decisive measures were being mulled to strengthen the organisation she hinted that Rahul Gandhi would continue as the party chief though he had offered his resignation to the Congress Working Committee after the defeat but the CWC had rejected his resignation. It is clear neither the party will give up the Gandhi family nor the family will give up its power over the grand 132-year-old party.

India’s highest ever temperature was recorded in May 2016 in Phalodi in Rajsthan with mercury toughing 51 degree Celcius. A severe water crisis was reported at that time. The thermometer hit 50.6 degree Celsius last weekend in Churu in the same state. A more severe water crisis is being reported. Situation has been worsening with passing of every year in almost the whole country. After five years of Modi’s rule, he has succeeded in only renaming the ministry dealing with the water resources. The new name is Jalshakti, a word which alone cannot solve the ever rising problem unless supported by effective plan of action and its timely implementation.

Amit Shah replacing Rajnath Singh as the home minister is important component of the mission Bengal of Narendra Modi. It is explicit that the task of expanding Modi empire cannot be accomplished unless all the Indian states are in his kit and for achieving this it is imperative that in the first move Mamata government should be pulled down as told to his party colleagues by the senior BJP leader Siddhartha Singh some three years back.

Exploding the myth that 1991 big ticket economic reforms were thrust on India by the International Monetary Fund, renowned economist C Rangarajan, one of the architects of the liberalization process said “the decision that we took to introduce reforms was entirely our own.”

Now Bernie Sanders is really beginning to sound like a socialist on the presidential campaign trail—and nobody’s batting an eyelash.

BHOPAL: Searching questions are being asked in the Congress circles about the total rout of the party in the recently held Lok Sabha elections. Self-critical comments are being made at the meetings being held in various parts of the state.

The Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan’ expectation during the run-up to the 17th Lok Sabha elections in India that a victory of the Bharatiya Janata Party would be desirable as only a hard-line government could make peace with the neighbours proves to be a pious platitude. “I congratulate Prime Minister Modi on the electoral victory of BJP and allies. Look forward to working with him for peace, progress and prosperity in South Asia,” but reciprocation from his Indian counterpart was lacking. This is not taken casually by Pak political analysts. Pakistan Today columnist M A Niazi quipped with a mild rebuke, “Imran may have learned a dangerous lesson from this election that jingoistic war scares are good for campaigns and the possibility that Modi might try to use it again”. The Pak PM expressed his diplomatic gesture twitting on 23 May,

Nitish Kumar is no more indispensable for Narendra Modi and his BJP. This clear and loud message was conveyed by none else but Nitish himself who on return today to Patna after swearing in of the Modi government jibed ; “ there was no need for JD(U) joining his government as the BJP had an overwhelming majority".

Major challenges await for the second term of the Modi government. The country’s economy is not in a good shape. Joblessness has reached a 45-year high at 7.8 per cent for urban areas and 5.3 per cent for rural areas. Though the government has dismissed the comparison of the data with the previous years saying it is a new matrix for estimation and cannot be compared with the previous years, the seriousness of the problem cannot be denied. Added to this is the recently released GDP figures showing a slowdown in the economy. The inflation-adjusted GDP grew at 6.8 per cent in 2018-19 as against 7.2 per cent in the previous year. The figure of the last quarter of the current year shows that the slowdown persists. In the last quarter the economy grew at 5.8 per cent as compared to 6.6 per cent in the previous quarter in the current fiscal year.