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Once the US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter descends in India in the April it would become clear whether the new found bonhomie between Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi and US President Barack Obama has proved to be a futile exercise or the USA administration still considers Pakistan is its best strategic partner in South East Asia. On number of occasions impressions were given by the Indian government that American establishment and its think tank at the initiative of Obama has brought about a change in its perception and attitude towards India. But at least, the issue of sale of F-16 aircraft to Pakistan by Obama administration has laid bare the realty and exposed the façade of friendship and tea diplomacy.

Narendra Modi had promised during the election campaign to convert the Indian economic in a dynamic mould based on industrialization to accelerate its pace and also expanded employment base. The central theme of his visits to several developed countries was to lure the foreign capital and technologies to ‘Make in India’. Yet third budget of his government by the finance minister Arun Jetley is attuned to keep the Indian economy pegged down to the conservative mould based on agriculture. The contradiction is apparent between his earlier promise and the current stance.

Union human resource development minister Smriti Irani was all fire and brimstone while condemning the praise for Mahishasura, the demon who was slain by Goddess Durga, by the “anti-national” JNU students. The minister wanted to know how the people of Kolkata will react to the eulogies to Durga’s enemy.

For the first time, the union government has presented a budget that is focused more on state elections than business concerns for industrial slowdown and the state of infrastructure. With five states going into polls, the BJP-led NDA government has preferred rural population, industrial workers, small enterprises to big business and industry to provide handsome financial support at the cost of medium and large entrepreneurs. Bharatiya Janata Party is clearly preparing itself to win over electorates in five principally agriculture-dependent states – West Bengal. Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Puducherry and Assam – that go to polls within next three to four months. The state elections appear to be as important as parliamentary election before BJP to boost the party’s national image in the face of its recent loss in Bihar after Delhi, a year ago, and brewing political controversies on one after another issues and improve its presence in Rajya Sabha. BJP seems to have found the merit of socialism over capitalism as the rich and middle class will be required to pay more to support the party’s focus on rural poor.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Kerala High Court’s order postponing, by two months, the final hearing in the SNC Lavalin case in which CPI(M)’s Politburo member Pinarayi Vijayan is allegedly in volved, has come as a shot in the arm for the CPI(M)’s Kerala unit.

BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) is fading with the Chinese economy plunging into growth trajectory. Chinese bubble economy has burst. Its double digit growth nosedived to 7 per cent in 2015 – lower than India. In G-20 summit in Ankara, no one could foresight for resurrection of double digit growth in Chinese economy. The concerted efforts to intertwine the emerging economies and make engine for world economic growth becomes a past story. “ President Xi Jinping vividly pointed out that BRICS countries are just like five fingers, each having its own strength , and together forming a clenched fist “, a statement released by China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs does not hold good anymore.

An attempt is being made to destroy Jawaharlal Nehru University, one of the finest universities at a time when most public universities are not in best of health. Doubtless, JNU is India’s finest university. Its contribution to scholarship is well known and widely recognized; its importance to national intellectual life is undeniable. It has produced social scientists who are highly rated the world over. Its former students have been and are in the higher echelons of the government, bureaucracy, policy institutions and media. Many vice-chancellors, directors of research institutes and chairpersons of important academic are drawn from JNU.

Much is expected by way of strengthening the South Asian regional economy through the implementation of the BBIN (Bangladesh-Bhutan-India-Nepal) seamless transport agreement, but its formal launch has been delayed.

The rail budget 2016-17, announced by the Union Minister of Railways, Suresh Prabhu, in Parliament today (February 25, 2016), is high on rhetorics and low on ground reality with promises galore in view of acute financial crunch, as also on account of facts how the railways would mobilize resources of meeting massive challenges of high capital investments, as it is already under a debt trap and with ambitious challenges of its projected goals with the decennial increase in the pay and perks of railways work force under the Seventh Pay Commission awards having a potential of drowning the railways further deep under the debt trap. Another pertinent question relates to 15 percent rise in unit costs as well as service costs despite decreasing High Speed Diesel costs, benefits of which have not been given to the rail users in view of the professed policy of the Fuel Adjustment Cost (FAC).

The savvy accountant in the Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu has demonstrated adroitness in presenting his second major rail budget, after the one he unveiled last year laying out a visionary one for five years (2015-20). Last year budget laid the thrust on doubling and electrifying 10,000 km of railway tracks by 2020 entailing a massive outlay of Rs 8.5 lakh crore which was sought to be compassed mainly by roping in a variety of financial instruments other than the traditional route of budgetary support, internal resources generation and market borrowings through its own arm Indian Railway Finance Corporation (IRFC). In his more than an hour-long peroration, Prabhu promised that the railways would exploit “new sources of revenue so that every asset, tangible or non-tangible gets optimally monetized”.