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NEW DELHI: Dr. Arun Mitra, a leading ENT surgeon of the country, has been elected as Co-President of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War at the 22nd Congress of IPPNW at York in UK.

BHOPAL: The sorry state of affairs in schools run by the state government. continues to haunt Madhya Pradesh’s education sector. Even as the state celebrates Teachers Day, the shortage of an estimated 31,000 teachers in government schools remains as a major malady. These vacancies are based on the department’s own figures, but the number is expected to be much higher if the guidelines for teacher-students ratio are taken into account. A more realistic number would be about 1 lakh.

JAFFNA; A fortnight back I was in Jaffna, the main city in the north dominated by Tamils. Though the city and its people are yet to come out of the trauma of the 30- year old ethnic war, the compulsion of survival has made them catch up with the time. Shop owners or small traders felt that while the financial condition of the people of the city is yet to make a substantial improvement, the area has undoubtedly attained a comparatively good economic growth rate. They shared the perception that soon the area will witness comfortable growth as the people are determined to achieve development.

The Modi Government unveiled its third Cabinet reshuffle giving primacy to gender factor by elevating a woman to the defense portfolio and dropping, inter-changing and adding a few familiar and new faces and the spotlight naturally shifts to governance now. But in the run-up to the reshuffle, a lot of ill-tidings gripped the government with the RBI announcing its final count of how much old currencies returned to the system to apprise the country rather obliquely of how the entire demonetization bid was a mountain labored to spawn a mouse! As if there is a distinct disconnect between official claims of demonetization and the stark ground reality, the Central Statistical Organization (CSO) came out with its first quarter gross domestic product (GDP) figures.

None of the attempts by the BJP’s opponents to pose a serious challenge to the ruling party at the Centre, including Lalu Prasad Yadav’s “BhaJaPa bhagao, desh bachao” (oust BJP, save the country) rally in Patna, is likely to give the BJP sleepless nights.

In spite of China sending a signal to Modi before the BRICS summit that any reference to Pakistan sheltering terrorism would jeopardize the summit, Narendra Modi managed to bring the issue to the centrestage. The Joint Declaration of the five-nations BRICS Forum at its 9th Summit in Xiamen city in China named Pakistan based outfits Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and Lasdhkar-e-Toiba (LeT) as scary terrorist groups and called for the extermination of terrorism from their soils. China was the chairperson of the summit.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The induction of Alphons Kannanthanam into the Narendra Modi Cabinet betrays the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) desperate attempt to expand its vote base by wooing the Christian community.

LUCKNOW: BJP has sought to play the Brahmin card by appointing Dr Mahendra Nath Pande, MP, as the state party president and inducting Shiv Pratap Shukla, MP, in the union ministry to win over the powerful Brahmin community in view of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

Two conclusions can be drawn from the major reshuffle in the Ministerial team effected on September 3 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in the run up to 2019 Lok Sabha poll.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s first visit to Myanmar (September 5-7) generates a great deal of euphoria from the perspective of his Act Asia policy and paves the way for North East –Myanmar connectivity. Myanmar is the only nation in ASEAN that has both road and sea borders with India. The two share a land border of 1,643 kilometers.