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For those who have been anxiously waiting for the CPI(M) central leadership to take a final decision in favour of building a broadbased unity of the democratic and secular forces to fight the BJP and its allies in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the voting outcome at the Sunday’s crucial meeting of the CC. was a big setback. Despite his best efforts, the CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury failed to persuade the Prakash Karat led majority faction to adopt his pragmatic line of building a firm unity of the anti-BJP forces to oust the Narendra Modi government from power. At the 91 member CC, the former general secretary Karat carried the majority with his draft political resolution which says that the party should not enter into any alliance or understanding with the Congress Party. Now as a result of the Karat draft being adopted by a majority of 55 to 31, defeating the draft of Yechury which kept open the line of understanding with the Congress, taking into account the threat from the saffron forces led by the BJP to the Indian nation, there will be only one draft for discussion at the 22nd Party Congress of the CPI(M) being held at Hyderabad from April 18 to April 22 this year.

If proximity to raw materials, abundant supply of water and electricity, availability of trained manpower, port and road connections, nearness of local and export markets and helpful local administration and government are principal pre-conditions for industrial investments, few Indian states can match West Bengal in these regards. Yet, if West Bengal has fallen behind other states such as Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Gujarat in attracting fresh industrial investments for years, it is because of a historical perception since the days of Bengal’s Marxist-led Left Front government.

The political turn of events unmistakably indicates that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is at the crossroads, where he stands solely with his own wisdom and strength, and his bête noire Rahul Gandhi in wonderland.

Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s convoy was stoned in Nandan village of Dumraon block during his tour to the village as part of his state-wide Vikas Samiksha Yatra. The police put the blame on dalits, which is considered a tactical ploy to shield the local legislator who has allegedly been the brain behind the incident.

After the three previous Bengal global investment summits turned dormant, the 4thsummit held this month threw some rays of hope. Most of the MOUs signed in the three previous summits remained on paper. But the latest made a seamless attempt to woo investors after Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee made a hard sell by visiting Mukesh Ambani in Mumbai and LN Mittal in London before the summit. Evidently, apart from Ambani and Mittal, the summit beamed with the presence of big Indian honchos like Sajjan Jindal, Kishore Biyani, Parmesh Adani and the nine country representatives. Their presence suggested they trusted Mamata’s slogan “Bengal means Business”, with Mukesh Ambani suggesting “West Bengal will be Best Bengal”.

An unusually warm January has produced an unprecedented cold war, the first such in the annals of Supreme Court, with a detente totally absent. Four judges, all men of known integrity and eminence, one of them a future Chief Justice, have staged a mutiny against Chief Justice Dipak Misra and his ways, which the nation is still struggling to come to terms with. The Bar Council says things are under control and will be normal any time soon. Although every day dawns with the signs of a thaw, by evening the situation is back to square one, with both sides sticking to their guns and making a solution as difficult as it appeared on the first day of the revolt. Even a second meeting between the four senior judges and the Chief Justice failed to melt the ice as the CJI refused to accede to the demand of the aggrieved judges that he call a press conference to acknowledge their grievances. Having criticised the judges for taking their issues to the ‘people’s court’, instead of seeking internal means of redressal, the reluctance of the official ‘faction’ is only natural.

This is not for the first time that Supreme Court judges have aired their grievances publicly, but the way four senior most judges of the apex court revolted against the functioning of the Chief Justice is unprecedented.

The Bengal chief minister Mamta Bannerji was, by her attempts to entertain, a pleasant surprise for top industrialists at the Global Business Summit held in Kolkata this week. She was at her best to lure industries to her state to accelerate the growth rate. The Uttar Pradesh chief minister Adityatnath Yogi gave a carte blanche to his state police to liquidate the known criminals in the state in order to lure business and industry to come to the state as a safer location for them to grow. The Telangana chief minister Chandrashekhar Rao sought south autonomy to states to decide the quantum of reservation for admissions to education and jobs in the government.

There is something rotten about the way the Russiagate probe is going these days, and the plausible explanations are quite troubling. The first thing that smells bad is the fact that the White House Counsel Don McGahn and former chief White House strategist Steve Bannon have the same lawyer—William Burck. This is strange considering that the Trump White House and Bannon have been at each other’s throats in recent days, with the president and Bannon attacking one another in numerous forums including on Twitter, on the cable news shows, and in best-selling books.

There have been several incidents recently which have drawn media attention on the exorbitant charges demanded by the corporate hospitals. Not that people were not protesting earlier; but media has become concerned about these now. The poor were already marginalised and devoid of quality healthcare, but now even the vocal middle class is feeling the pinch. India is among the 15 lowest spenders on health by the state. Our public health spending hovers around 1 percent of the GDP. Other similarly placed countries spend double of this. The developed countries spend 10 times of this. As a result of falling government expenditure, the private sector has grown. The policies of the previous government gave opportunity to the corporate sector to enter the healthcare and education sector as a lucrative business. This trend has gained further momentum after the present government came in power because of their extreme neo liberal approach towards economic development. These sectors have erstwhile been considered as key to socioeconomic development and an asset for the society. But this concept has completely changed after the shift in economic policies.