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One hundred years have passed since the historic October Revolution in Russia that overthrew the old oppressive regime and established the world’s first socialist state led by the workers and the peasants. The ten decades since then have witnessed tumultuous developments in the world including the second world war, the founding of the socialist states in the eastern Europe led by the respective communist parties in the wake of the defeat of Hitler’s Germany in the second world war, the victory of the Chinese Revolution in 1949 under the leadership of the Communist Party, the emergence of the first Communist Party led government in Latin America in Cuba led by Fidel Castro, Vietnam’s magnificent victory against the USA in 1975 followed up by victories of the communist forces in Laos and Cambodia.

LUCKNOW: Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and his government are working hard to bring more investment to UP as promised in the pre-election vision document. In the last eight months, the Yogi Government has interacted with large number of business delegations from within the country and abroad as well as diplomats from various countries in connection with bringing investments into the state.

It is a misnomer that China under Xi is turning socialist. It is a façade Xi is wearing to confuse the global fraternity. With China pursuing the capitalist path assiduously over the years it is naïve to construe that it would make a paradigm shift, embrace Marxism and convert to a communist country.

Ramnath Kovind’s failure to mention Jawaharlal Nehru’s name in his first speech as the President in which he referred to other stalwarts like Deen Dayal Upadhyay was not inadvertent.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley may derive some cheer from a more meaningful agenda boost from OECD, as he starts work on a challenging Budget for 2018-19, unlike his gloating over an innocuous change in Moody's credit rating recently. More taxes to augment revenues and monetary easing in 2018 are being held up to accelerate recovery in 2018-19. OECD notes after suffering from a temporary setback, the economy is "bouncing back".

Peace in the Middle East has, for many decades, been a rare commodity. The flow of oil, gas, and minerals, which has seen the development of some of the richest states on the planet, has not brought with it a rush of democratic control.

PATNA: Bihar is witnessing the worst kind of politicking on the issue of downsizing security for RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav. The UPA-1 had provided him with the Z plus security, manned by the NSG commandos. But a couple of days ago, the Union home ministry trimmed his security cover from Z+ to Z. In future, the commandos of the CRPF would take charge of his security. He will no longer be protected by NSG commandos, but by a 35 member squad of CRPF jawans.

Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi is likely to take over the reins of his party ending the suspense on December 5. He will be fifth member of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty to become the president of the 132-year grand old party. The Congress strategists are delighted that in the run up to the elections in Gujarat next month, Rahul Gandhi is getting good response.

The latest surge in the global oil prices has come as a big relief for the socialist government of Venezuela headed by President Maduro as the Government is now better positioned to spend funds for implementing the pro-people schemes which were affected earlier due to cash crunch on account of lowering prices of oil and other commodities. Venezuela, being a major oil exporter, has started getting much higher oil export funds and the indications suggest that the trends will continue.

Does anyone remember Anil Ambani’s Reliance Power IPO in 2008? The highly hyped public issue was launched in February that year during the stock market boom. The IPO was oversubscribed 73 times recording five-million applications. The issue price was Rs. 450 ($9.15) per share. At the grey market, price was around Rs.900 ($18.30). Reliance Power’s maiden IPO garnered an astronomical $190 billion from subscriptions. It was the world’s biggest IPO of its time. Investors simply went crazy as Reliance Power’s pre-issue ad campaign’s punch line — Power On, India On — created a massive euphoria around the company’s grand future in the energy deficient country.