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THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: What does the elevation of Sitaram Yechury as the CPI(M) General Secretary signify for the Kerala CPI(M), the most powerful unit of the party in the country?

As Parliament reopened on April 20 for voting the budget of fiscal 2016 and bracing itself for tough legislative battles, the first year record of the all-powerful Modi Government throws up a mixed picture of reform initiatives with as yet uncertain outcomes while its tax and growth policies are still to gain credibility abroad. The economy's slowdown has meanwhile dragged on.

It is not the 1975-77-like Emergency in India. But actions of some of the Modi government’s ministers and Sangh Parivar and its allies’ leaders are reminiscent of the Emergency period’s mindset — perhaps even worse.

The nearly two months of holiday seem to have left Rahul Gandhi pretty much where he was – trapped in the closed space of fixed ideas devoid of any nuances.

Talking to the media on Sunday afternoon soon after his election as the new general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) was announced at the 21st Party Congress in Visakhapatnam. Sitaram Yechury said ”We are at the lowest ebb of the party’s history, both in terms of our parliamentary presence and organizational strength. This has to be reversed. It is only on our internal strength that we can be effective in national politics”. This is a very candid admission and Sita has set the right chord by recognizing the reality on the ground. The 21st CPI(M) Party Congress might have been explicit in identifying many weaknesses in the operations of the party’s tactics and strategy in the last ten years and it is good that the top leadership has owned the responsibility for the failures, but the road map charted out at the Vizag congress is still full of confusions and many grey areas remain which the new general secretary Sitaram Yechury has the responsibility to clarify.

Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai is expected to visit India later this month at the invitation of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Mr. Modi who has given big focus on improving relations with the neighbouring countries, is giving special importance to this visit and the Prime Minister’s Office is working on a detailed programme for further assistance to Afghanistan with the objective of pepping up the Afghan economy.

Merger of six political parties, having faith in socialist ideology, is an important development which may upstage the BJP in Bihar assembly elections due later this year. Banking on their socialist outlook, the merged parties pose a serious challenge to the BJP, which is striving hard to win in Bihar after Delhi debacle. The Congress too is tacitly backing the new combine. Already, the BJP juggernaut is slowing down nationally. With an eye on Bihar poll, the announced merger of six parties—SP, JD(U), RJD, JD(S). INLD and SPJ—into one political entity may in the time to come, have impact in other states too. Samajwadi Party Chief, Mulayam Singh Yadav, will be leader of the Janata Party combine but the issues such as the name, flag, election symbol of the party will be finalized by a six-member committee.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The efforts of the CPI(M) to strengthen the unity of Left forces suffered an early setback with the Revolutionary Socialist Party(RSP) ruling out its return to the Left Democratic Front (LDF) in Kerala.

I was a bit surprised as I didn’t expect it to happen in America. Its snowing lightly and we were stopped at traffic red light on Cambridge street, Burlington, MA. A middle aged woman, probably his panic, came out of nowhere near the window of our car and displayed a placard-”help the poor lady with a dime, please.”Burlington is a small town near Boston city. Later I found out from my personal experience while travelling through cities and towns in USA that asking for alms, in varied forms, is not an uncommon sight in America.

With the BJP unable to exploit the Modi magic and having failed to impact the people of West Bengal, now it is the turn of the government agencies, especially the CBI to lampoon and humiliate Trinamool and its chief Mamata Banerjee. The CBI which has already been investigating into Saradha scam and has arrested some prominent faces of the Trinamool, has of late resorted to the political exercise of maligning and coercing Mamata Banerjee and her government. At least two important issues have come to the public notice. The first is CBI issuing notice to the TMC general secretary Subrata Bakshi seeking details of the party's income and expenditure since 2010 to 2014. Interestingly, the notice has tried to encompass the entire gamut of Trinamool's income sources, including the profit from sale of chief minister Mamata Banerjee's paintings. Nevertheless on its part the CBI does not find any fault with its machination and even refuse to attribute it a 'political move'.