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NEW DELHI: The Communist Party of India will organise a three-day nationwide agitation programme on July 24, 25 and 26 before state and central government offices demanding setting up of a Rs 1 lakh crore agricultural prices stabilisation fund, land reforms and measures to solve the deepening agrarian crisis. The decision in this regard was taken by the three-day national council meeting which concluded in New Delhi on June 18.

NEW DELHI: In a cyber attack targeting India, a Turkish group named Ayyildiz Tim, purportedly claiming to be the first Turkish cyber army and using imagery associated with jihadi ideology, hacked the sites of India Press Agency –IPA Newspack and Commentwise—and left a logo and a message on the sites, suggesting their action was part of Islamist movement.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The myth of the Left Democratic Front (LDF) being anti-development, sedulously fostered by political rivals, has been buried fathoms deep.

Bihar unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party is caught between two lines on the party’s stand towards Nitish Kumar. The party is vertically split on the role of the party in Bihar in the prevailing political situation and its stance towards the chief minister. While one section of the leaders, mostly from the upper caste, holds the view that Nitish should be the focal point of their attack, some backward caste leaders are not completely in agreement. They reiterate the old argument that attacking Nitish will further alienate the OBCs. But amidst this scenario senior leader Sushil Kumar Modi has been carrying on his campaign against Lalu Yadav, yet another senior leader of the backwards, and especially the Yadavs.

What is wrong if the West Bengal government wants to merely’ include Bengali as one of the languages in the state-funded school education curriculum? Principal state language is compulsory in school education curriculum in almost all other states in the country. There are states such as Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra, Kerala and Uttarakhand which have reserved government and factory jobs in the grade II, III and IV categories for the locals and are also seeking to enforce them in the private sector. In many states, locals have been defined as those either of the local origin, or lived in the state for certain number of years and are fluent in the main local language in reading, writing and communicating. West Bengal has no such law.

The Prime Minister Narendra Modi is not a naïve. By his rule for nearly 14 years in Gujarat, he has given evidence of his political astuteness and his administrative capabilities. Above all he proved to be a better equipped with political marketing techniques. He did not engage in verbal duels with those who heaped allegations of communal politics on him for a decade. His reply and effective one was to ensure no another break out of even minor communal incident in 12 years. His marketing technique earned him attention of the world leaders after the Beijing Conference on the World economy. After the Beijing performance even Indian industrialists vied to issue certificates of his economic performance in the decade of his regime in Gujarat.

Even as Darjeeling continues to burn, political leaders and parties cannot help feeling, ‘Here we go again’, a strong sense of déjà vu, whether they support or oppose a separate Gorkhaland state. They have been going through the same motions, shouting the same slogans and resorting to now familiar acts of arson for over three decades.

In a recent policy liberalization, the government has done away with the FIPB route for approval of major foreign direct investment. This is a major policy shift to woo the foreign investment, besides opening doors big way under Make in India campaign. But, there are more such challenges to stimulate the domestic investors.

HONGKONG: China has launched one of the world’s most powerful space observatories dedicated to the study of black holes, the darkest regions of the universe where gravity is so strong not even light escapes.

“You do not need to commit to land in a jail. Get into any business and you will end up eventually in jail.” This message is gone viral on social media as younger generation is expressing through it its dissatisfaction with plethora of recent rules, regulations and enactments that stand in the way of their economic activities. The young of third generation since the emergency imposed by the Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in June 1975 do not know what had happened then. They have not even read of why Indira Gandhi preferred to use the constitution to escape her political crisis and moral dilemma as consequence of the high court verdict unseating her.