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Prominent voices in Pakistan have realized that diplomatic engagement between India and Pakistan is a Pakistani pipedream. The multilateral Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit to be held in Islamabad in October holds promise but Pakistanis know Prime Minister Narendra Modi is unbending. The setback to Modi in Lok Sabha elections 2024 hasn’t helped. Modi would rather strengthen his ties with Russia and the United States than get in the India-Pakistan quagmire.

Known for having transformed the Delhi education scenario in government schools from poor to very good, even better in performance than private schools in the National Capital Territory, in just a decade, AAP government is now on the way to transform Punjab school education to provide high quality education for all within six years. Punjab is the second state under the party’s rule.

Donald Trump was facing an easy ride to the White House when he was matched against Joe Biden. Now he has to face off against Kamala Harris things look very different. Trump has good reason to be scared.

With its back to the wall post its tally of 18 seats won in 2019 Lok Sabha polls reduced to 12 in 2024 parliamentary elections, West Bengal BJP unit is still at a crossroads. If leader of the Opposition Suvendu Adhikari is advocating a line which dispenses with anything to do with the minority community voters, state unit chief Sukanta Majumdar disagrees with it.

This month, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced a significant shift in the funding allocation for the University Grants Commission (UGC) in the latest budget. This historical institution, which saw an allocation of Rs 6409 crore during the 2023-2024 fiscal year, will receive only Rs 2,500 crore in 2024-25. This substantial reduction marks a major decision affecting India's higher education sector.

Rahul Gandhi and a host of Congress leaders have criticised Nirmala Sitharaman and the Modi government for copy-pasting from the Congress manifesto while formulating the new budget. Looking at the issue from another perspective, they must be happy that the finance minister has given Congress their best campaign point for the coming round of assembly elections. Haryana and Maharashtra are set to go to polls later this year, followed by Jharkhand and Delhi early next year.

Who benefits from blaming Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath for the BJP’s poor Lok Sabha polls performance in Uttar Pradesh? As things have moved, Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya is the dark horse though Union Home Minister Amit Shah is also talked about as somebody who gains from a downgraded Yogi. OBC heavyweight Keshav Prasad Maurya has long held a grudge that Yogi Adityanath walked away with the Chief Minister’s post after he, Keshav Prasad Maurya, won the state for the BJP in 2017. The saffron-clad Yogi came out of the blue and became Chief Minister, when Maurya was the head of the UP unit of the BJP.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi lifting the 44-year-old ban on government employees from joining RSS and allowing them to actively participate in its programmes, might be construed as a tactical move to buy peace with RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, but more than that, it is a move to legalise RSS interference in managing and running the state machinery and allow it to have access to the decision making mechanism.

“Indian economy needs to generate average of nearly 78.5 lakh jobs annually until 2030 in the non-farm sector to cater to the rising workforce,” said the Economic Survey 2023-24 tabled in the Parliament of India on July 22. Next day on July 23, the Union Budget 2024-25, announced several schemes for employment generation. Three days later on July 26, an inter-ministerial brainstorming roundtable session promised only formation of a crore group on building synergies and providing holistic picture of employment generation in the country, but failed to even promise concrete employment generation programmes for the current year in the short term, or in the medium term by 2030, or in the long term by 2047 the year for which a dream of a Developed India is sold.

The new coalition government of South Africa formed last month after the national elections on May 29 is facing a major crisis as the leading party African National Congress (ANC) has been taken to court by its partner Democratic Alliance (DA) on the issue of a speech delivered by the President Cyril Ramaphosa during the election campaign.