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Before the BJP-led government decided to felicitate Atal Bihari Vajpayee with Bharat Ratna, the highest Indian civilian award, nobody came to his Krishna Menon Marg residence. The only regulars included N M Ghatate, his friend for nearly six decades and his media advisor when he was the Prime Minister, A K Tandon. L K Advani, Manmohan Singh (when he was PM) and B C Khanduri, former union minister, never missed greeting the former PM on his birthday.

New Delhi: Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network (ACCCRN), an initiative of The Rockefeller Foundation launched “Road to Resilience”, a guide to creating resilient cities in New Delhi yesterday.

The Prime Minister’s radio message to farmers in his Man Ki Baat programme a few days back creates a positive effect on the sector of medium, small and mini enterprises (MSME), which otherwise is dying for electricity support.

BHOPAL: The indefinite dharna by Congress MLA in the Vidhan Sabha hall has created an unprecedented situation which the state government is finding difficult to resolve. The Congress members have already spent two nights in the Assembly, 'Gadde' and 'Takia' were brought from the tent houses to enable them to have sleep. The Vidhan Sabha has provided meals to the agitating MLAs.

The reassuring remarks by the Union Finance Minister Mr Arun Jaitley on March 22 after addressing the central board of the apex bank as is customary following the presentation of the Union Budget that everything is honky-dory between the Ministry of Finance and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), did imply that the mutual relationship remains taut. The denial of ‘disconnect’ said this in ample measure! Though the Governor of the central bank is chosen and appointed by the government with the precedents showing that by and large they seldom embarrassed their benefactor, there were occasions in the past when some had chosen not to go the whole hog with the government in following loose monetary policy when the authorities showed predilection for loose fiscal policy.

Tamil Nadu's disgruntled DMK led by Mr M Karunanidhi (91) hopefully looks to the poll battle in 2016, largely on a wishful premise of the soon-to-be delivered orders by the Special Court in Karnataka going adverse for the ruling AIADMK leader Ms. Jayalalithaa in the Disproportionate Assets case.

Babulal Marandi is in the peoples’ court seeking justice against the misdemeanours and strong arm tactics of the BJP which lured six of its legislators. The B JP and its government have targeted to finish Marandi politically. While the BJP is strictly following the RSS script on expansion in the Jharkhand, it has also been also assiduously working on the plan to decimate Marandi’s Jharkhand Vikas Morcha. Within a month of its coming to power, the BJP struck ruthlessly against Marandi.

If the continuing high credit and deposit rates running for a period of almost five years at a stretch have little impact on India’s high inflation rates, the current inflationary trend is obviously outside the domain of the Reserve Bank’s monetary policy. RBI has done what it could do under the circumstances. The tight money policy has failed to curb inflation. High credit rates are not compressing the money supply with the system. Similarly, high deposit rates are not driving surplus money with the public into bank or institutional deposits. If the known inflation control system by the country’s central bank has failed for such a long period, there are several reasons, of which two seems to be most compelling. First one refers to massive black money circulation benefiting a big section of the population that does not respond to RBI’s money control measures. The other one is that a good number of profit making Indian companies are not seriously impacted by RBI credit rates for two reasons: these fund-flush firms don’t need to borrow much from the domestic banks at such high rates and others indulge in cheaper commercial borrowings thinking that domestic rates will not surge beyond a point impacting their repayment costs in rupee terms.

Has India’s mainstream media decided to pay mere lip service to the Constitution’s fundamental values of secularism and liberalism while ignoring daily attacks on them by the Sangh Parivar, an extremist organisation in which the Bharatiya Janata Party is deeply embedded? Going by the media’s silence on several recent developments, that does seem to be the case.

LUCKNOW: The Akhilesh Yadav government is heading for confrontation with opposition parties on the issue of proposed bill on curtailing the powers of mayors in the state.