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In its fourth year in the government, the top brass in the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party may be finding it quite embarrassing as more and more senior party members are becoming critical about the country’s sudden economic slowdown, especially since November, 2016. The big dip in the 2017-18 first quarter (April-June) GDP growth figure to 5.7 per cent has provoked an intense debate on the state of economy from both the opposition and some of BJP’s own senior party members and economists. The latest to publicly express his concern over the economic slowdown is no other than RSS chief Mohan Madhukar Bhagwat himself. The Sarsanghchalak of the Hindu nationalist organisation, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), is recognised as the most powerful external influencer of BJP. The Sangh chief is never known to criticise the party in public. Bhagwat expressed his concern over the current economic slowdown during his annual Dussehra lecture. Interestingly, BJP veteran Lal Krishna Advani was a special invitee at the meeting, for the first time.

LUCKNOW: Akhilesh Yadav, who has got himself re-elected as the national president of Samajwadi party for a full five years at the party’s national convention at Agra, faces tremendous challenges within the party and outside.

Finance minister Arun Jaitley keeps repeating at monotonous regularity that the benefits of demonetisation and GST would be realised in the long term, although he has no problem in acknowledging that short term pains, the manifestations of which are now visible in terms of lower growth rate, job losses and problems with the informal sectors of the economy, are unavoidable. He may or may not be right. But how long is his long term? There needs to be clarity on that.

I had the privilege of knowing M L Fotedar closely, from early 1980s, few years after he became powerful political secretary to Indira Gandhi. It was said he was eyes and ears of Mrs. Gandhi. Fotedar died at the age of 85 last week as a dejected man; he was not given a Rajya Sabha berth when the Congress was in a position to do so, not given due importance around Sonia Gandhi and did not have a place to live in Delhi. He did not build a house in the union capital even though he could have built a mansion easily in a posh area. He had to move to neighbouring Gurgoan where he lived with his family including a doctor son.

It is as well that a more poll-preoccupied Prime Minister has been forced to reckon with a much-touted "fastest-growing economy" on a perilous slowdown, and facing tougher challenges for re-igniting growth with some jobs, to restore credibility to his Government.

It may sound bizarre but the day is not far when a married couple would have to produce the Aadhaar card for seeking permission to live together. This fear is strengthened by the manner in which the Aadhaar card is being made compulsory for survival in India. Already Aadhaar has become mandatory for admission, burial, hospital, marriage; name anything in the life of common people. The latest, but the most dangerous, proposition is to link the mobile phone with Aadhaar.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has set the right tune at a programme in Delhi on Thursday when he said that the coming election is not going to be Opposition versus BJP-it is going to be the BJP versus the rest of the country. Kejriwal was in the stage along with the Congress leader Manish Tewari and the former finance minister Yashwant Sinha. The maverick CM who earlier strongly shunned the company of the Congress Party due to his objection to the GOP’s record of corruption said ‘the people are going to fight the 2019 elections. Parties will not fight. The battle is going to be between your(pointing to Sinha) leader, your big leader and the people”.

The Catalonian independence referendum last Sunday is a watershed in Europe, just not in Spain. The repression ordered by right-wing Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy immediately summoned up memories of the brutality of the years of the Francisco Franco dictatorship, which ended following his death in 1975 and a transition to parliamentary democracy.

Pakistan Foreign Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif has stirred a hornet’s nest with his ingenuous statement that Pakistan not only erred in having been an American proxy in the Soviet war in Afghanistan, but it was “a collective sin or mistake “. Refusing to accept the entire blame for the rise of extremism and terrorism, Asif stated at the Asia Society Forum in New York with a sense of atonement,”It was a proxy war. We were used and discarded.”

This is a rare but classical somersault performed by Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar. In April 2016 he had called upon all non-BJP parties to unite for a "Sangh-mukt Bharat", an India free of the RSS. But now he would be sharing the stage on October 5 with RSS sarsangchalak Mohan Bhagwat at a huge congregation organized in village Chandwa of Arrah, the native place of dalit icon and former deputy prime minister Jagjivan Ram in honour of the 11th century Hindu theologian Ramanujam.