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Bihar unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party is caught between two lines on the party’s stand towards Nitish Kumar. The party is vertically split on the role of the party in Bihar in the prevailing political situation and its stance towards the chief minister. While one section of the leaders, mostly from the upper caste, holds the view that Nitish should be the focal point of their attack, some backward caste leaders are not completely in agreement. They reiterate the old argument that attacking Nitish will further alienate the OBCs. But amidst this scenario senior leader Sushil Kumar Modi has been carrying on his campaign against Lalu Yadav, yet another senior leader of the backwards, and especially the Yadavs.

What is wrong if the West Bengal government wants to merely’ include Bengali as one of the languages in the state-funded school education curriculum? Principal state language is compulsory in school education curriculum in almost all other states in the country. There are states such as Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra, Kerala and Uttarakhand which have reserved government and factory jobs in the grade II, III and IV categories for the locals and are also seeking to enforce them in the private sector. In many states, locals have been defined as those either of the local origin, or lived in the state for certain number of years and are fluent in the main local language in reading, writing and communicating. West Bengal has no such law.

The Prime Minister Narendra Modi is not a naïve. By his rule for nearly 14 years in Gujarat, he has given evidence of his political astuteness and his administrative capabilities. Above all he proved to be a better equipped with political marketing techniques. He did not engage in verbal duels with those who heaped allegations of communal politics on him for a decade. His reply and effective one was to ensure no another break out of even minor communal incident in 12 years. His marketing technique earned him attention of the world leaders after the Beijing Conference on the World economy. After the Beijing performance even Indian industrialists vied to issue certificates of his economic performance in the decade of his regime in Gujarat.

Even as Darjeeling continues to burn, political leaders and parties cannot help feeling, ‘Here we go again’, a strong sense of déjà vu, whether they support or oppose a separate Gorkhaland state. They have been going through the same motions, shouting the same slogans and resorting to now familiar acts of arson for over three decades.

In a recent policy liberalization, the government has done away with the FIPB route for approval of major foreign direct investment. This is a major policy shift to woo the foreign investment, besides opening doors big way under Make in India campaign. But, there are more such challenges to stimulate the domestic investors.

HONGKONG: China has launched one of the world’s most powerful space observatories dedicated to the study of black holes, the darkest regions of the universe where gravity is so strong not even light escapes.

“You do not need to commit to land in a jail. Get into any business and you will end up eventually in jail.” This message is gone viral on social media as younger generation is expressing through it its dissatisfaction with plethora of recent rules, regulations and enactments that stand in the way of their economic activities. The young of third generation since the emergency imposed by the Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in June 1975 do not know what had happened then. They have not even read of why Indira Gandhi preferred to use the constitution to escape her political crisis and moral dilemma as consequence of the high court verdict unseating her.

BHOPAL: Farmers continue to protest in some form or the other in Madhya Pradesh, though no violence has been reported since June 10, the day on which Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan ended his 28-hour-long fast to “restore peace”. Chouhan has taken some steps to heal the wounds of the families who lost their kin in police firing at Mandsaur on July 6. He visited them and handed over cheques of Rs one crore each to all the six families.

LUCKNOW: BJP is unnerved with the possibility of a grand alliance (mahagathbandhan) of opposition parties ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.

The Indian Establishment is perpetually in a state of denial. Self-denial has almost become a state policy, except that it has not been written into the Constitution’s directive principles. One may argue that there is nothing wrong with complacency as long as it gives a sense of contentment and security. But when it is a false sense of security, it lands us in a dangerous situation. A good part of India’s problems actually stem from this self-denial mode that we have placed ourselves in. The first step towards solving any problem is recognizing that it exists. But we are adept at dealing with a problem not only by ignoring it but vehemently denying that anything like that exists at all.