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BHOPAL: Outcome of two by-elections in Madhya Pradesh to be held on November 19 may indicate whether what is now popularly known as 'note bandi' and the killing of 8 Simmi activists in a fake encounter played any role or not. Out of the two by-elections one is for the Shahdol Lok Sabha seat and the other for Nepanagar Vidhan Sabha seat. Both the seats were rendered vacant because of the deaths of sittings members.

At a time when the Narendra Modi Government has actually turned the rural India and the urban poor destitute through his demonetization measures, the recent petition in Supreme Court filed by the noted activist jurist Prashant Bhushan, has added a new political dimension to the extent of corruption at the level of the politicians including the Chief Ministers and the nexus between the industry people and the political parties.

Normal life for millions in the country was thrown quite out of gear ever since the Prime Minister Narendra Modi‘s dramatic decision on November 8 to declare the extant high denomination currencies of Rs 1000 and Rs 500, the latter widely used by all for meeting daily expenses, would no longer be legal tender and genuine holders of these notes need to exchange them within a set time limit. He has not really demonetized these notes as they are bound to return with new security features and in new series before long since the intent was only to remove the existing notes in flow and in stocks to be consigned to the waste paper heap as their value was not worth the paper on which they were colorfully printed!

Chief Minister Jayalalithaa's extended stay in Apollo hospital for recuperation has put her Government rudderless in tackling major policy issues, as Parliament opened its winter session amid storms over demonetisation.

The Global steel sector is at cross-roads with falling commodity prices and declining demand for steel with poor growth and aggravated by excess steel supply and dumping from China. But strangely India is in a unique position with surging growth, accelerated by massive investment in infrastructure generating huge demand for steel and cement.

It was an outlandish suggestion, but the advice of Nitish Kumar to Mulayam Singh Yadav to join hands with Mayawati for floating a 'Mahagathbandhan' in Uttar Pradesh, had wider implication.

Power induces responsibility and moderation. This phenomenon has been seen in India where, as Congress MP Shashi Tharoor said, Narendra Modi has been transformed from a hate figure to an “avatar of progress and modernity”.

It is high time that the government firmly steps in to prevent Tata Sons, the so-called holding company of the Tata group, from destabilising the management of such joint stock Tata companies of national importance, in which Tata Sons hold stakes well below 50 per cent, to protect the interest of the majority of shareholders, including government’s own financial institutions (FIs). Though Tata Sons control nearly 30 joint stock companies listed with the Bombay stock exchange (BSE) and National stock exchange (NSE), its holdings in majority of these companies, barring Tata Consultancy Services and Tata Investment Corp, vary mostly between 21 and 31 per cent. Tata Sons often seem to control the boardroom of these companies with the help of independent directors of its choice. Government institutional shareholders should immediately appoint new directors in those Tata companies to prevent Tata Sons and its octogenarian chairman to take undue board control of those companies.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Kerala has once again blazed a new trail in launching a development initiative aimed at comprehensive development of the State.

The victory of the Republican candidate Donald Trump in the US Presidential elections, has come as a big jolt to the progressives within the Democratic Party and outside who have been working very hard for the Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton for the last three and half months since the end of the Democratic Convention at the end of July this year. Once Clinton was finally nominated by the Convention and the Sanders supporters succeeded in incorporating their major demands as a part of the Democratic agenda, the Sanders group as also the US Communist Party, fully joined the campaign against Trump and the entire tenor was that the Hillary victory would open up the path for further progressive changes to the benefit of the American working class, lower middle class and the poor. That focus is now lost and the stunned Left is reconciling to the new reality that they would have to adjust themselves to the new post-November 8 situation that the battle has to be intensified further to protect the gains that were made during eight years of President Obama. The task is to build broadest unity of the American people to fight the Trumponomics from January 20, 2017 and to bring more people, including the Trump voters of the workingclass who were misled by the Republican demagogue in the course of the election campaign.