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THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The worst is over, and the Nipah-struck Kozhikode district is bouncing back to normality.

The most hilarious court judgment ever is attributed to Sir Roger de Coverley, an Old English fictional character. Sitting in judgment for three days, hearing a dispute between two men complaining against each other, Sir Roger finally gave the verdict: Much might be said about both sides.

Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar has lost the battle for survival even before it was trumpeted. The manner in which Nitish has been shifting the goal post and shuffling agendas gives a clear indication that he is in deep crisis and unable to evolve his future course of action.

Encouraged by the poll success in Karnataka and by-elections in Uttar Pradesh, Opposition unity looks certain in the run up to the general elections in 2019. If the Opposition sticks together, the BJP led by Narendra and Amit Shah, appears to be in trouble. Presuming the BJP is routed in Lok Sabha election in May, next year, what will be the scenario like? First, who will lead the grand coalition? The Congress, which may emerge as single largest party, is bound to stake its claim to leadership, but there are many aspirants for the Prime Minister’s post. These aspirants include Mamata Banerjee, Mayawati and Chandrababu Naidu.

Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History Of Time and Citizen Pranab Mukherjee’s A Short History of Bharato! One a book, the other an oral summation. Hawking’s book was for eighth graders and it explained complex concepts such as space, time and black holes to the simple mind. Pranab’s quick summary of the entropy of India through 2000+ years of war and peace was to “RSS officers” with “exceptional brains”.

Against the popular belief among Indians that India is one of the most peaceful nations of the world, it has been declared 28th worst peaceful nation ranking 136th out of 163 nations measured for peacefulness by the Global Peace Index 2018. In comparison to last year, India scored only a little better by 0.025 pushing its rank up by four from 140th rank. The country’s overall score is 2.504 on a scale of 0-10.

LUCKNOW: Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath appears to be in deep trouble after the humiliating defeat in Kairana and Noorpur by-elections.

BHOPAL: Eight days of farmers’ agitation have passed off peacefully. The only major event during this period was the visit of Congress president Rahul Gandhi to Mandsaur district, which saw six persons killed in violence last year. Five of them were killed by police bullets. Congress arranged the visit of Rahul Gandhi to coincide with the first anniversary of this brutal act of the police. Besides addressing a massive rally, Rahul also met the family members of those who were killed by the Police.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is not a radical reformer. He is a great administrator and not a reformer as he seems, the Economist said. The report card of his four years governance envisages that he is more laudable in administration and bureaucracy than in economic reforms. Nonetheless, he ushered the country into high growth trajectory and bolstered it into the highest global growth trend, surpassing China.

The Indian economic growth figures for January- March 2018 quarter announced early June are certainly encouraging. The CSO figures say fourth quarter of 2017-18 recorded 7.7 per cent GDP growth, which is an eight quarter high. Following this growth momentum, the overall GDP is now revised upwards to 6.7 per cent for 2017-18. This indicates that the demonetization impact is fading and GST related glitches are getting resolved, rating agency Crisil says, adding the broad take away is that there has been a sharp upturn in economic activity. The corporate results too are healthy and looking up. There is no doubt that the economy is on a recovery mode but there are several problems in the economy, which are not getting reflected in the GDP figures. These irritants could derail the growth process if correctives were not found immediately.