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The mantra of maintaining equidistance from the Congress and the BJP has played well for the Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik. He gets a certification of appreciation from the NDA government at the Centre for urban development. Another feather is on his cap as Bhubaneswar becomes the number one choice for development of Smart City under an ambitious flagship programme mooted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014.

The politics of vengeance has been the key factor in the Modi government denying the smart cities to the eastern Indian states. Except Bhubaneswar, Odisha’s capital, no city from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand or Bengal has made it to the smart list. Last year, when the names of the cities for including in the list of the smart cities were being finalized Bihar government was given the impression that at least three of its cities - Bhagalpur, Biharsharif and Muzaffarpur - are among the 97 shortlisted and would be upgraded. But none made it to the first list of 20 released by the Union minister Venkaiah Naidu.

The thirteen months of Haryana’s first ever BJP ministry have been marked by unsavoury controversies. The most worrisome among them are some of the eligibility conditions imposed for contesting the recently concluded Panchayat Raj Institutions elections and launching of cases against some television actor-comedians. Coming in the wake of the divisive utterances of some BJP leaders, party MPs and sadhvis that have communally polarized India, such conditions are symptoms of the Emergency period’s mindset. The matter assumes greater concern as these developments have taken place in the backdrop of the instances of intolerance which recently made some eminent writers, authors, film personalities and artistes to return their coveted national awards.

Despite recent moves by opposition parties in West Bengal - the Congress, the Left Front and the BJP - to work up a vigorous pre-election campaign, there is no doubt that the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) is best placed to win a second term in the state Assembly.

The rapid expansion of e-commerce, foreign brand retail, IT and electronics start-ups, e-transaction portals, financial inclusion, RuPay bankcards and mobile phone business in India are all okay. But, they alone can’t ride India’s real growth story for long. Because, India’s real economy is languishing. The country’s per capita cell phone usage or the total annual cell phone sales statistics have little connect with the country’s per capita consumption of steel, non-ferrous metals, plastics, cement, energy of all sorts, live alone with other major industrial products and the state of its infrastructure, healthcare and education. Going by official statistics, India’s real economy seems to have taken a back seat, though not sinking as yet.

The Congress’s barefaced conduct in Kerala is typical of the coarseness, which Natwar Singh said he had detected in Sonia Gandhi in his autobiography, One Life Is Not Enough.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy has survived a scare. Thus reads the headline in a prominent English daily. But has he really weathered the political storm?

Political parties in Tamil Nadu, ahead of the May elections to the Assembly, want to usher in a 'change' in the state's governance, and BJP is trying hard to bring NDA rule through an alliance by reportedly offering bulk of the seats to contest for the influential state parties, DMDK and PMK, and thus break the hold of 'corrupt' regimes of AIADMK and DMK over the last five decades.

There could not have been a funnier reason to dismiss a government than in Arunachal Pradesh. “Cow slaughter” was cited, among other things, by Governor Jyoti Prasad Rajkhowa as a sign of complete collapse of law and order in the state while recommending imposition of President’s rule in the state. Claiming breakdown of the constitutional machinery, the governor also attached a photograph of a cow being slaughtered outside Raj Bhavan as a material justifying the proclamation of emergency.

BHOPAL: Psychiatrists can play a major and decisive role in checking suicides by farmers. This claim was made at the conference of Psychiatrists held in Bhopal. It was suggested that governments should seek the help of Psychiatrists and use a holistic multipronged approach to prevent farmers from taking such an extreme step.