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PATNA: On November 25, three mahadalit members of a family were brutally assassinated by upper caste goons in Jandaha. They were the father, mother and ten year old brother of a dalit girl. The goons owing allegiance to the upper caste people of the area nursed a lecherous desire to rape the girl. They forcibly entered into her house. When her parents fiercely resisted, the goons killed the three and also brutally thrashed the girl. She is fighting for life at the Patna Medical College and Hospital. The police of chief minister Nitish Kumar, who carved out mahadalit from the dalit on the plea of providing better opportunities and facilities to them for their empowerment, turned its face away and allowed them to carry on their terror.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP President Amit Shah have been carrying on a Marathon campaign for December 9 and 14 Gujarat assembly elections. Their no-holds-bar attack on the Congress and the UPA government is bitter. One wonders if this will get them votes? This is for the first time in over two decades that the BJP faces such a tough poll and PM, Amit Shah and other BJP leaders appear jittery about the poll outcome.

BHOPAL: The Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has achieved a remarkable feat. On November 29, he completed 12 years in office. No other chief minister has ruled the state for so long. Digvijay Singh had completed 10 years (1993-2003) as chief minister. Before him, only Dr. Kailashnath Katju and Arjun Singh could complete their 5-year terms. In post-Independence India, Jyoti Basu was the only politician who served as chief minister for three decades. Chouhan’s remarkable achievement is being celebrated with great fanfare by the BJP in the state.

India produces nearly 50,000 MBBS doctors every year in its 479 medical colleges. There are about 9.3 lakh doctors registered with the Medical Council of India. Out of this, doctors engaged in active professional work are presumed to be numbering about 8 lakh only. With this number we are not able to meet the challenge of doctor patient ratio, which is much less than what is required as per WHO guidelines. WHO recommends one doctor per 1,000 persons whereas we have one doctor for 1,650 persons. Considering the population distribution in the country, we find that there is huge urban rural gap in this ratio as the number of doctors serving in rural areas is much less proportionately. So we need more doctors. It is in this context that we must review the scenario of medical education in or country.

Some recent developments in Pakistan leading to the forced resignation of the country’s Law Minister, Zahid Hamid, have not received much attention in India. A ‘movement’ for the sacking of the minister was launched by a small and little-known party of recent origin – the Tehreek-i-Labaik Ya Rasool Allah (TLY). The party demanded the removal of Hamid because of a change he purportedly made in the text of the oath of affirmation by members of parliament, which allegedly related to the finality of Prophet Muhammad as enshrined in the Elections Act of 2017. The change replaced the phrase “I solemnly swear...“by “I believe...”

Official data on second quarter (July-September) for 2017-18, with GDP estimated at 6.3 per cent, may signal at best a modest revival over the first but the economy is still months away for a rebound overcoming lingering effects of the disruptive demonetisation. Additionally, GST glitches, resulting in revenue depletion from the hurriedly launch from July 1, 2017 also had a sobering effect on second quarter growth.

Nepal’s commitment to ‘an independent, indivisible, sovereign, secular, inclusive, democratic, socialism oriented, federal democratic republic’ has been hit by a speed breaker- an unprecedented extravaganza in the poll campaign for federal and provincial elections. Freed from a 250-year-old order of monarchy, the Himalayan state has been transiting historically into a federal democratic republican order. The two-phase federal and provincial polls aim at a transparent democracy, based on proportional representation of law-makers after a decade-long debate in the Constituent Assembly. Sadly enough, the very essence of transparency is being turned into a mockery by corrupt practices imbibed by political parties in the fray.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Simply great and greatly simple. These words aptly sum up the character and persona of veteran Communist Party of India (CPI) leader and former minister E Chandrasekharan Nair, who passed away on Wednesday.

LUCKNOW: Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and his government are working hard to bring more investment to UP as promised in the pre-election vision document. In the last eight months, the Yogi Government has interacted with large number of business delegations from within the country and abroad as well as diplomats from various countries in connection with bringing investments into the state.

It is a misnomer that China under Xi is turning socialist. It is a façade Xi is wearing to confuse the global fraternity. With China pursuing the capitalist path assiduously over the years it is naïve to construe that it would make a paradigm shift, embrace Marxism and convert to a communist country.