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Economic Survey, presented to Parliament ahead of budget every year is seen as a report card of Government’s performance on the Indian economy. This year too it is no different but there is one change: its presentation and production have improved. As Economic Survey is prepared by economists, it is not taken very seriously while preparing the General Budget, which is made by politicians with the help of bureaucrats. Politicians see the budget as yet another tool to tweak the economy to suit their constituency and win elections and certainly not as an instrument to rapidly achieve socio-economic development of the country. Indian economy has certainly progressed well since Independence but unfortunately big ticket growth and development have not happened barring when major reforms were initiated in 1991, compelled by the economic crisis at that point of time.

Veteran author Nayantara Sahgal saying she’s half-Muslim and then claiming “I’m Hindu myself” is the height of confusion. At the Jaipur Literature Festival, Sahgal confirmed her half-Muslim identity and then confused with “We refused a religious identity when we attained Independence because we’re a deeply religious country with many religions. My problem is with Hindutva because I’m a Hindu myself and it makes me sad that the Hindutva mentality has divided us into Hindus and others.”

There are valid reasons at this time to guess options before the Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a snap poll to Lok Sabha ahead of May 2019, when the five-year term of the current House ends.Firstly, there is emerging anti-incumbency factor, though limited to isolated areas yet, underlining the changing dynamics of the political scene. Any sagacious leader like Mr Modi would not let it grow beyond harmless limits.

After all the bickering the Shiv Sena has decided to part ways with the BJP. The party has passed a resolution in its national executive meeting last week that it will go it alone in the upcoming 2019 Lok Sabha and the Assembly polls. The two oldest ideological partners have been hurling abuses at each other for the past three years and more. Ironically, playing opportunistic politics, Sena wants to continue in the state government in which it is a coalition partner and also remain in the NDA. Incidentally, the Sena is the second largest constituent of the BJP-led NDA at the Centre, with 18 members in the Lok Sabha. Many expect the Sena to come out of the state government nearer the polls. Power is the glue and the Sena does not want to give up power in the interim period.

The pre-budget Economic Survey of the last full-budget of the Modi Government is, true to its customary elegance and gravitas, focused on long-term issues that have a decisive bearing on the Indian economy and the demographic dividend it is putatively enriched with to make high growth a distinct dream, if not a reality!

Robert Zaretsky recently commented in The New York Times that Donald Trump’s presidency marks the coming of age of The Society of the Spectacle—a society in which truth is essentially reduced to a mere hypothesis and consistently subordinated to orchestration.

When it comes to competing in the world economy, the Chinese dragon always wins hands down against the Indian elephant. India's share in world trade is stuck at around 1.8 percent since 2011, whereas that for China is close to 12 percent. For the Indian elephant to catch the Chinese dragon at the halfway mark by 2020, the export figure needs to grow in excess of 30 percent annually. Indeed, a hard task at hand.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) may be trying to push the manufacturing of telecommunications equipment in the country for both economic reasons and alleviating security concerns, but the progress made so far in this regard is far from encouraging. India has become one of the world’s top importers of telecom gears. And, it may remain so for years until the government takes some firm actions to ensure that both the memory chips and other key inputs, including batteries, are made in India.

Shares of rail traffic, both in passenger and freight, have come down drastically since Independence vis-à-vis other modes of transportation despite volume of rail traffic having gone up substantially in absolute terms.. Presently, passenger share of Indian Railways has come down to 13 percent from 75 percent at the time of Independence. There is a worrying trend of decline in actual number of passengers since 2013-14. The number of rail passengers in 2012-13 was 8421 million, which has come down to 8151.90 million in 2015-16.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: With the Dubai Police and the Dubai Court giving a clean chit to Binoy Kodiyeri, son of Kerala CPI(M) state secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan’s son, the party has emerged out of a tight political situation at least for the time being.