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A journalist friend got a gift a decade ago – an Emporio-Armani wrist watch which went round his wrist like a dream. One evening it went flying off his wrist into the four-deep raucous crowd lined up around the dance floor at the neighbourhood bar. End of time! An Emporio-Armani is max priced these days at around Rs 50,000. Peanuts compared to Siddaramaiah’s Hublot, going price Rs 40 lakh!

The recent spurt in fanatic messages, seeking to redefine character of Indian nation, is intriguing for its timing. The next election to the Lok Sabha is not even a year away. Narrowing down supporting sections to mere upper castes cannot be taken as a sure sign for expanding the electoral base of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Fanaticism exists in every society. Yet they did remain silent for three years. The time for their euphoria was immediately after unprecedented verdict that gave a clear verdict in favour of the BJP in its three and half decades’ existence.

Two hundred years have passed since the birth of Karl Marx. Few historical figures of any kind have been so influential ‑ surely no thinker has. Yet many now would dismiss his ideas as outdated, as flawed, as tending towards totalitarianism. Why should we remember him? What can we possibly learn from him now?

‘Could Mayawati be the next PM?’ NDTV tweeted Sunday after Dr Pronoy Roy asked the question to Mayawati at a JD(S) rally in Karnataka. The BSP supremo smiled. Two JD(S) leaders on the stage with Mayawati smiled. Close Up it looked like a Colgate commercial! Danish Ali, who at times claims he is second only to H S Devegowda in the JD(S) hierarchy, answered with an emphatic ‘Yes’.

A humongous problem that is being brushed under the carpet in India is the grave sickness in the banking industry, particularly the public sector banks. In fact, the banking scam is far bigger and widespread than coal scam or 2G spectrum scam. Diamond merchant Nirav Modi banking fraud case and the Vijay Mallya Kingfisher airlines case are only the tip of the iceberg and the rot in the Indian public sector banks is far greater and unfathomable. Gajendra Haldea, a retired erstwhile Planning Commission official and former IAS officer, believes corruption in Indian banking is huge and perhaps much worse than China when banks there had huge non-performing assets.

NITI Aayog’s warning that India should rethink about joining the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) forum could not have come at a more appropriate time. The government’s key think-tank had reportedly argued, in a note on free trade agreements (FTAs) and their costs to highly import-dependent India, that such a partnership could be disastrous to the country. India is one of the world’s biggest import-driven, deficient-balance-of-trade economies. Significantly, India’s joining RCEP would mean a huge market access to China — the key player in the grouping. And, that threatens to unsettle India’s economy and its domestic manufacturing programmes.

Every society has a band of fanatics. They grow from upper strata of society as they have enough leisure and idleness to get weird ideas. For fanatics, their beliefs become reality. They do not cull out facts from history or life around them. In fact they really see no need even to know facts from the past. Past is of no importance unless it supports their beliefs. They do not live in present and future has no meaning to them unless it is moulded in the way of their fantasies.

Conclusions of a global survey on jobs by Gallup are set to further embarrass the Modi government in the ‘pakoda’ debate. And the timing of the report provides least comfort to the government as its record in creating new jobs is facing scrutiny in an election year. Modi’s suggestion recently that people selling pakodas and earning Rs 200 a day must also be counted as gainfully employed had created a storm, with former finance minister P Chidambaram butting in with his caustic remark that by the same logic begging could also be considered as employment. Modi’s comment, which many considered outrageous, led to a barrage of protests.

Marxism is unique in the sense that it can be transcended only when its agenda is realised; the agenda of realising a classless Communist social order. Specifically under capitalism, its understanding of capitalism is alone thorough enough for it to comprehend the historical possibilities that lie beyond it. Hence Marxism can never be, under capitalism, rendered superfluous until capitalism is itself superseded. Post capitalism, Marxist philosophy and world view will continue to be the basis and the scientific guide, for socialist construction and the transition to Communism.

‘Electrification’ of India was completed on April 28, 2018, according to a tweet by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which claimed the government has ‘fulfilled a commitment’. However, the subsequent government clarifications revealed that there were several villages ‘not-electrified’ and electrification work was in progress. As for the fulfillment of election promise, he must remember that he had promised ‘24-hour electricity in every village and street’ on January 23rd 2014 in an election rally in Gorakhpur, while boasting about his achievements in Gujarat, and making taunts at Mulayam Singh Yadav. He had added further that it required a ’56-inch chest’ to do that.