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LUCKNOW: But for implementing the polls promise of waiving loans to farmers, the first budget of chief minister Yogi Aditya Nath to the tune of Rs 3.84 lakh crores has failed to give any direction.

It will be wrong to suggest that President Donald Trump was unusually soft and cooperative towards President Vladimir Putin during their first ever meeting at Hamburg, on the sidelines of G20. The meeting, originally scheduled for 35 to 40 minutes, lasted for well over two hours. No one outside the small three-member team on each side may have any clue of what exactly transpired in the meeting. Other than the two heads of states, two countries’ top diplomats — Rex Tillerson of the US and Sergei Lavrov of Russia — and two translators, none else was privy to the proceedings. However, what did not escape the attention of most G20 members is the length of the meeting and bonhomie between Trump and Putin.

Barely a month after heightening anti-India protests on border stand-off, China made a somersault against the protest and applauded Modi’s reforms. Further to the surprise, China underpinned India as the future global low cost factory and forecasted that India would edge out China in near future.

Fifteen years ago, US President Bush, congratulated India on having 50 million Muslims but no terrorists. That plaudit was an exaggeration, yet it was unearned. Given the strident rise in militant Islam across the world since 2001, the modernization of India’s Muslims stood out. That moderation owned a lot to strenuous political efforts to check majoritarian violence and persuade minoritism that India was their land too. Alas, the rise of lynch mobs could signal the coming end of that phase.

There is this continuing spectacle. You ask for an interest rate cut from the in every season: when prices show a little drop; when the stock market goes up; and, when the government thinks growth is not as much as they would like it to be.

Cryptocurrencies are creeping into Indian households through newspaper inserts, just like the ubiquitous coaching centres, full-body check-ups, home-delivery foods and so on. It is perhaps for the first time that the cryptos are coming round to the ground like this. What it means is that the time for cryptocurrencies, made famous by its most valuable brand ambassador bitcoin, has finally arrived on the Indian scene and is ready to enter the mainstream.

Nitish Kumar may appear to be in an enviable position, having a firm control on the political developments in Bihar, but in reality he is pursuing a one-step-forward-two-steps-backward policy. His nonconformist stand in the wake of corruption charges against Lalu Yadav and his deputy chief minister son Tejashvi and daughter Misha Bharati has created a sense of bewilderment amongst his partymen and also kept the bureaucracy on tenterhooks.

Our country is in the midst of a profound governmental crisis. This crisis is revealing itself deep within the bourgeois state, that hallowed body of legislators, lawyers, and corporate lobbyists vaunted by some as the apogee of modern civilization. There are overlapping crises in the White House, in the executive as a whole, and between the presidency and the federal judiciary. Fault lines also lie in the relationship between the presidency and Congress with regard to traditional checks and balances and consent for judicial nominees. Congress itself is not immune, as witnessed by the subversion of the traditional filibuster rule. Here, GOP partisanship is pursued to the exclusion of all else. In the period before the election, the vacillation and caving of neoliberal Democrats was also to blame.

KOLKATA: For once, one can agree with Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) leader Benoy Tamang: as the indefinite bandh in North Bengal hills seems destined to enter a second month, he asked publicly, “Is Darjeeling out of India?”

BHOPAL: Leaders of all the factions of Madhya Pradesh Congress met at Lahar, a small town in Bhind district, an area regarded as the Scindia stronghold while the assembly constituency there is represented by Dr. Govind Singh, a staunch follower of Digvijay Singh. By hosting the meeting there, Dr. Govind Singh conveyed the message that his faction's rivalry with Scindia is now a closed chapter.