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Is the Congress President Sonia Gandhi back in the driver’s seat after putting her son Rahul Gandhi forward since 2013 by making him as the party vice president? No one in the Congress today is talking of Rahul Gandhi’s elevation as demoralisation has set in deeply. Dissent within the party against Rahul has been growing even as the transition trauma is still continuing. The fight between the old guard and the new guard (read Rahul’s team) is also continuing.

Suddenly, for both the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) and a resurgent Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP) on a roll, winning elections in West Bengal has emerged as a major political challenge. It is barely past the first quarter in 2017. Yet Both parties are already in a pre-poll campaign mode as they face the impending Panchayat elections and the next Lok Sabha elections due in April/May 2019.

Few will disagree that making a Rs.1,00,000-crore-plus branded fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) market, led largely by multinational companies and their associates, suddenly busk in the glory of nearly 5,000-year-old India’s own home-grown Ayurvedic formulae products is no joke. A Yoga-guru-turned-marketing-mahaguru from Haridwar, Baba Ramdev, has not only made it happen in just about 10 years, but, in the process, has put some of India’s 100-plus-year-old MNC brands and their associates such as Hindustan Unilever, Procter & Gamble, Nestle, Glaxosmithkline, Horlicks, L’Oreal, Colgate, ITC, etc, at their wit’s end about how to fight the Baba’s Patanjali onslaught in the market. The name, Patanjali, an ancient Rishi, as described by Paramhansa Yogananda in his ‘Autobiography of a Yogi,’ defined ‘yoga’ as a process to ‘control the fluctuations of the mind-stuff’. The word Ayurveda combines two Sanskrit words — Aayush and Veda. In english, Aayush means life and Veda is knowledge. Thus, Ayurveda means ‘knowledge of life’.

An audacious journalist, Nora Chopra, was given a loving farewell by colleagues, family and friends at a memorial meeting held at the Delhi Union of Journalists’ office on April 27, 2017.

Why is Make in India loosing steam? Was it eulogized with fanfare when it was launched in September 2014? Two years have passed, Make in India continues to reel under uncertainty. It did not make any headway in the growth of manufacturing trajectory. Production growth hovers around 2 per cent, despite high GDP growth in the country (7 per cent). Export was flat. Investment by private sector dwindled. Stock market wades in volatility.

The disaster at Sukhma, where 25 CRPF jawans lost their lives, reveals many shortcomings in government’s Maoist policy. Absence of strategic clarity, over-dependence of states on Central forces, have crippled the fight against Maoist. It is also incomprehensible that there is no clarity yet about the strategic approach to Maoist problem even though the Indian state has been battling it for last 50 years. Shivraj Patil, when he was Home Minister in the UPA government, had described Maoist as “our brothers and sisters”. The Maoists took full advantage of this approach to augment their strength and built fire power. In 2006, a 14-point policy was announced which, among other things, talked of addressing the problem simultaneously “on political, security and development fronts”. The policy, however, never got implemented on the ground.

India witnessed 703 communal riots during the calendar year 2016 in which 86 persons lost their lives and 2321 people injured compared to 752 communal incidents in 2015, 644 communal strife in 2014, 694 in 2013 and 668 in 2012. According to the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), one major communal riots occurred in Hazinagar, West Bengal during the year. An analysis of communal riots, however, reveals low intensity violence is the new mantra of the anti-social communal elements.

LUCKNOW: The Yogi government in Uttar Pradesh is facing a staggering law and order problem created by various saffron outfits during last one month.

The strategic partnership between India and US is primarily driven by defence related deals. There is no other propelling element. It is a vibrant deal till India responds positively to the American requirements. The strength of the partnership is judged by the nature and quantum of defence deals. An analysis of the ‘strategic partnership’ between India and US and the defence deals struck, raises some serious questions regarding their utility and effects on achieving India’s strategic interests. The Modi government had signed 147 procurement contracts worth over Rs 2.96 lakh crore in three years.

With the agitation against government effort to grab adivasi land and handing over the same to the private and corporate sectors for setting up industries, the Union government is also steadily moving ahead with the plan to implicate the activists on the plea of being Maoists. But undeterred of the NDA government’s machinations, stir against Adani project spreads across Godda. The activists have resorted to a sort of direct action.