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Ramnath Kovind’s failure to mention Jawaharlal Nehru’s name in his first speech as the President in which he referred to other stalwarts like Deen Dayal Upadhyay was not inadvertent.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley may derive some cheer from a more meaningful agenda boost from OECD, as he starts work on a challenging Budget for 2018-19, unlike his gloating over an innocuous change in Moody's credit rating recently. More taxes to augment revenues and monetary easing in 2018 are being held up to accelerate recovery in 2018-19. OECD notes after suffering from a temporary setback, the economy is "bouncing back".

Peace in the Middle East has, for many decades, been a rare commodity. The flow of oil, gas, and minerals, which has seen the development of some of the richest states on the planet, has not brought with it a rush of democratic control.

PATNA: Bihar is witnessing the worst kind of politicking on the issue of downsizing security for RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav. The UPA-1 had provided him with the Z plus security, manned by the NSG commandos. But a couple of days ago, the Union home ministry trimmed his security cover from Z+ to Z. In future, the commandos of the CRPF would take charge of his security. He will no longer be protected by NSG commandos, but by a 35 member squad of CRPF jawans.

Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi is likely to take over the reins of his party ending the suspense on December 5. He will be fifth member of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty to become the president of the 132-year grand old party. The Congress strategists are delighted that in the run up to the elections in Gujarat next month, Rahul Gandhi is getting good response.

The latest surge in the global oil prices has come as a big relief for the socialist government of Venezuela headed by President Maduro as the Government is now better positioned to spend funds for implementing the pro-people schemes which were affected earlier due to cash crunch on account of lowering prices of oil and other commodities. Venezuela, being a major oil exporter, has started getting much higher oil export funds and the indications suggest that the trends will continue.

Does anyone remember Anil Ambani’s Reliance Power IPO in 2008? The highly hyped public issue was launched in February that year during the stock market boom. The IPO was oversubscribed 73 times recording five-million applications. The issue price was Rs. 450 ($9.15) per share. At the grey market, price was around Rs.900 ($18.30). Reliance Power’s maiden IPO garnered an astronomical $190 billion from subscriptions. It was the world’s biggest IPO of its time. Investors simply went crazy as Reliance Power’s pre-issue ad campaign’s punch line — Power On, India On — created a massive euphoria around the company’s grand future in the energy deficient country.

Growing number of vehicles on Indian roads has thrown a major challenges of tackling the menace of road rage as a new phenomenon. Road rage manifests in aggressive and angry behaviour by drivers with rude gestures, verbal insults, driving unsafely or in threatening manner, making threats, altercations, collision, injuries or even death. Other issues governing road rage involve poor driving skills, poor geometry of roads, poor designs of roads, speed moderating devices, chasing motorists, aggressive driving, cutting of lanes, flashing lights and loud horns.

The advent of winter in the North is normally greeted with an abundance of green vegetables in affordable price to the aam aadmi but what is now visible in the local vegetable market is the vertiginous rise in the prices of popular vegetables such as peas (matar) and the widely consumed common people protein, the onion. The bulbous root which is a part and parcel of the indigent people’s wonted daily diet is now woefully absent as its cost at the retail level is swinging between fifty to sixty rupees per kilogram. In the past too, onion price spike had unseated governments in the State such as Delhi and this time around on the eve of the two keenly watched and contested Assembly Polls in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh, the tear jerker hardly evoked any mention in the campaign! But this is in no way detracting the inordinate spurt in onion prices in the major wholesale markets like Lasalgaon in Maharashtra to the dismay of its regular users pan-India and particularly so in the North.

There are several instances in the past when rating agencies faced the flak for their downgrades, with the victim sovereigns or companies questioning them on their conclusions and blaming them for lack of understanding and arbitrariness. It is perhaps for the first time that an agency has been criticised for an upgrade, as it happened with Moody’s revision of India’s investment grade.