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Nuclear energy is being projected as the panacea for the energy crisis in our country. It is true that we have acute shortage of electricity which is so essential for development. But there has been debate around the globe whether nuclear energy is the answer. There is evidence to prove that It is fraught with dangers right from digging of its ore - the uranium, to its transport to the nuclear power plants, hazards involved in its utilization in nuclear facilities and lastly its waste management. There have been many accidents worldwide in the nuclear facilities which have been of extremely serious nature. The Three Mile island accident in 1979, the Chernobyl accident in 1986 and the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011. In India too several low level accidents have occurred but they have gone unreported because there is no transparency in the nuclear energy industry and it is not covered under the RTI act.

The Rohingyas of Myanmar are an unfortunate people. They are stateless. Myanmar, the country they had settled in as early as the fifteenth century (during the Kingdom of Mrauk U), has not given them citizenship. They are unwelcome in India and Bangladesh, from where they originally migrated. India considers them a potential threat to national security. They have been accused by the Indian state of being either Islamist jihadis or having close links with the jihadis, who are identified with terrorism.

The Gujarat elections, due in December end, is the first test for the BJP, in run up to the 2019 general elections. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP President, Amit Shah, have already switched over to election mode. At the moment the BJP is focusing full attention on Gujarat. Modi choose Ahmedabad as first city for the Japanese Prime Minister’s visit and not Delhi. He visited the union capital later. The announcement of bullet train—to run between Ahmedabad and Mumbai—was made in the Gujarat capital to woo voters. Also, almost simultaneously, Sardar Sarovar dam on river Narmada was inaugurated by the Prime Minister keeping in view the coming election. The project, said to be one of the biggest in the world, will hugely benefit Gujarat.

LUCKNOW: By declining to form a new party or morcha, Mulayam Singh Yadav has strengthened the hands of his son Akhilesh Yadav, who is the national president of Samajwadi Party.

Germany is moving backwards. The rise of the far right nationalist party is likely to trigger the old issue of the East and West Germany. Angela Merkel got elected for the fourth successive term. But her re-election as Chancellor comes with huge challenges, both domestic and international. It also gives rise to skepticism about the nature of global politics as the election result heralds the changing political contour of Germany, the country which had said good bye to the rightist mode of politics. True enough, her victory for the fourth consecutive term as Chancellor, though with a much-reduced mandate for her Christian Democratic Union, marks a watershed moment in Germany’s post-War history.

All is not too well with the Indian economy, which is on a downslide, more pronounced after a grave economic blunder, demonetisation. The recently rolled out Goods and Services Tax is of course a game-changing indirect tax reforms move but the haste with which it has been implemented has pulled down the economy further, though temporarily. Multiplicity of GST rates has resulted in several teething problems and the desired increase in GDP growth by two percentage points is not going to happen in the short or medium term. Two percentage points increase in GDP would have happened rapidly if there had been a single or two-rates GST. The heavy taxes on petroleum products, which is out of GST, have added to the woes of the people as India had one of the highest petrol and diesel prices when they have been falling globally.

Never mind the vituperative put-down by Trinamool Congress (TMC) leaders of Mukul Roy, the co-founder of their party, after his resignation: the fact remains that he stole a march over them by quitting first before the party reacted. More importantly, his walkout will certainly pose problems for his former colleagues, especially Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in the days ahead.

Transregional economic partnership, defence and security have become pre-eminent in the new era of India- Japan cooperation. The debut of transregional economic partnership was made during the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Japan in November 2016 when both countries mandated for a joint partnership for the development of Asia- Africa connectivity. The race for transregional cooperation got impetus with the subsequent visit of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to Ahmedabad in September this year, when the joint partnership was extended to India’s Act Asia policy, with a new name ‘Act East Asia Forum’. The partnership will seek development of North East and promote connectivity with the neighbouring countries of Bangladesh, Myanmar and beyond. The joint partnership will have further strength as it will have opportunities to be embedded in the Indo-Pacific Economic Corridor initiative, which was launched by USA to exercise its assertiveness in Asia Pacific.

The Modi Government has sought to sidetrack gut issues in economy's decline, playing populism ahead of 2019, with a new promise to ensure electricity to all households in the country before the end of 2018. For economy watchers, his sop is revival of the discarded PM Economic Advisory Council (EAC), reconstituting it in his fourth year of office, to "analyse" issues and "advise" the Prime Minister thereon.

The intermittent and hesitant interest shown in politics by the two Tamil filmstars, Rajnikanth and Kamal Haasan, is obviously the result of the vacuum created in Tamil Nadu by Jayalalithaa’s death.