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All is not well in Uttar Pradesh’s first family going by the pubic spats within the Samajwadi Party. With barely a few months to go, the feuds within the party supremo Mulayam Singh’s family may hurt its chances in the next year’s Assembly polls. It is one of the biggest political families in the country with at least 20 members including the sons, daughters-in-law, uncles and nephews holding public office.

BHOPAL: Is Babulal Gaur preparing to stage an open revolt against the Bharatiya Janata Party? His fiery speech at the conference of Yadavs held in Bhopal gives this indication. It may be mentioned here that Gaur was forced to resign from the Madhya Pradesh Ministry headed by Shivraj Singh Chauhan. Though he writes his surname as Gaur, he is Yadav by birth. In fact, once Gaur told this correspondent that Lalu Yadav advised him to stop using Gaur as his surname and start calling himself as Babulal Yadav. Though Gaur belongs to Uttar Pradesh, he shifted to Bhopal after his father took up some job in Bhopal.

Prime Minister, Narendra Modi is determined to alter the basic character of the Indian polity and also the multi polar character of India’s foreign policy. Though after the fall of Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR) the world had become unipolar, Indian foreign policy continued to be guided by the spirit of the non aligned policy. Unfortunately for the saffron government, this nonaligned policy was nothing but expression of the secular policy and politics. This has been the reason that Modi is out to reverse the process.

India is endowed with a strong and stable Government but it needs to take a re-look on its governance and policies to tackle multiple challenges preserving democratic norms and ensuring its key policies, which command a broader national appeal during a necessary phase of critically addressing the left-over social and economic backwardness.

The first quarter of the third year of the tenure of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi is not going well for the BJP. Mr. Modi’s personal rating may not fallen much but the BJP’s image has nosedived and this is reflected in the results of the local level elections in the three states- Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat which are BJP strongholds and going for elections to the state assemblies during the next two years. The attacks by the Sangh Parivar activists on the dalits have further given a jolt to the Modi-Amit Shah duo’s grand plan to bring dalits within their political influence taking the 2019 Lok Sabha elections in view.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Expansion of a political front is a legitimate political objective in coalition politics. But when it is sought to be achieved by diluting commitment to the cause, then you are chipping away at your own mass base.

The final conflict, said Ignazio Silone, the Italian author, would be between the communists and ex-communists. India has seen a number of such conflicts among votaries of the Left, leading to the splintering of the communist movement.

The government’s latest bid to amend labour laws and regulations, including overtime work rules, in order to improve the ease of doing business in India concerns mostly the highly organized sector workforce and where bi-partite and tri-partite wage settlements hold the key to good industrial relations. However, before Parliament approves such bills, it is important that the government must clearly explain how the existing labour laws and practices are standing in the way of easing the doing of normal business by entrepreneurs in India and also what are the other factors that are choking organized sector industrial production. Labour as a factor of production plays little role in the country today in improving an organized sector firm’s top and bottom lines. Indirect and direct taxes, import dumping, poor and high cost infrastructure, high power rates, non-availability of important industrial inputs, shrinking export markets and falling local investor sentiment are playing a much bigger role in choking the country’s industrial production and growth. Economy is becoming increasingly dependant on foreign direct investors. The government is, for the first time, under serious pressure from these investors to ease the ways the business is done in the country.

India has made myriad strides in all walks of life, agriculture, science, technology, education, trade, commerce, industry, and socio-economic development and is now one with the globalised world, its economy having been opened to the world and linked to the market forces. Development in major economies does affect India as well. In the process, country’s destiny is linked to the globalised economy. Yet, it is noteworthy that during the last 69 years since Independence on August 15, 1947, the country’s growth and prosperity have not trickled down to alleviate poverty, disparity, illiteracy, and malnutrition as envisaged in the successive annual plans.

Diplomatic circles in Kathmandu, capital of the evolving republic of Nepal, have zoomed in on the fast-changing politico-financial scenario of the Himalayan state during the interregnum between now and mid-October this year, when the President of People’s Republic of China Xi Jinping is scheduled to visit Nepal with a sizable delegation. Apparently, the trip is to strengthen bilateral ties covering economic and financial co-operation, but more important is the probable diplomatic shift towards China. Obviously, the status of India in the Himalayan diplomacy is bound to weaken. But to what extent is the shift likely? That’s the big question before the Indian diplomats.