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US Secretary of State John Kerry visiting India in the first 100 days of the Narendra Modi Government with a historic mandate for change and reform, expects his call on the Prime Minister and meetings with Indian leaders would help build a “transformative partnership” between the two largest democracies in tackling global economic challenges and security in Asia-Pacific region. There would be added momentum for a historic partnership when President Obama welcomes Prime Minister Modi in Washington later this year.

Legendary Apeejay’s Jit Paul, who lorded over Kolkata’s food-fun-n-frolic hub Park Street, once told his friend, West Bengal’s iconic Marxist chief minister Jyoti Basu, that the CPM leader should shed the leftist concept of job creation if he really wanted to create large number of jobs for the state’s unemployed youth. Witty Paul advised Basu to shift his government’s focus on creation of thousands, if not lakhs of employers. The latter would automatically recruit employees in various skills. The period was the early1980s. Bengal was saddled with an unprecedented industrial exodus and sickness mostly due to the Congress government’s freight equalization policy on coal and steel that robbed Eastern India of its natural advantage of the proximity to those vital raw materials, which once made the region the country’s hub of heavy industry, steel and iron making, ordnance factories, electricity generation, shipbuilding, railway wagon manufacturing and engineering outfits, also partly with labour unrest rooted in falling financial and business fortunes of other industries due to dwindling demand for their products and high cost of other raw materials such as petro-chemicals and cotton that came from Western India carrying high freight cost.

The Union Ministry of Home Affairs has laid down a well-knit system of security for VVIPs and VIPs and individual public figures to be followed by the States and Union Territories. Accordingly, the responsibility for providing security to an individual rests primarily with the State Governments and Union Territory Administrations in terms of Schedule V11 of the Constitution of India under which Police and Public Order come under them. Security of an individual comes under the jurisdiction of the State or Union Territory in which such individual resides ordinarily or happens to be residing.

Providence has again demonstrated its habit of springing surprises. After months of electoral drought, the Congress experienced a slight drizzle as it won all the three seats in the recent Uttarakhand by-elections.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: If the Congress-led former United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Government was a disaster for the Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs), the Narendra Modi-headed National Democratic Alliance (NDA) is turning out to be a calamity.

LUCKNOW: Majority of Congress workers and leaders in UP feel only Priyanka Gandhi Vadra can revive the flagging party.

History bears testimony whenever the central leadership of the Congress becomes week, dissidents in the party-ruled come to the fore. After India’s defeat in India-China war of 1962, Jawaharlal Nehru’s leadership became weak and the dissidence rose in states (at that time most of the states were ruled by the Congress). Little known word “dissidents” became common in politics. Rival groups came up in the states and the target of the dissidents were Chief Ministers. The result was that, for the first time, since independence the Congress suffered a huge set back in the states. At that time assembly and the Lok Sabha elections were held simultaneously.

BHOPAL: The Madhya Pradesh government has introduced a bill in the ongoing budget session of the Assembly, which, if passed, will result in complete erosion of the autonomy enjoyed by the universities of the state. The provisions of the bill are such that they will reduce the universities to the status of Government Colleges.

KOLKATA: The Trinamool Congress observes 21 July every year as Martyrs’ Day. It was on this day in 1993 that thirteen youths were shot dead by the Left Front Government’s police in Kolkata. They had gathered at various points in the city to participate in a ‘march to Writers’ Buildings’ (the State Secretariat) at the call of the All India Youth Congress of which Mamata Banerjee was the State President. Their demand was that voters’ identity cards be made the only document to verify a voter’s identity, to prevent the mass-scale ‘scientific rigging’ that the CPI-M was allegedly resorting to. Mamata was still in the Congress. The TMC was formed in 1998. Since then it had been religiously observing this day with Mamata as the main speaker.

After getting decimated in the last Lok Sabha election, the grand old party of India, Indian National Congress is facing unprecedented crisis of its history and the way, the party is functioning only suggests that it is in a self destruction mode. It is not facing any problem from outside. It did not get defeated because BJP was better than it. It is facing the problem, which it has created for itself. It has stuck itself in the mire and it is not showing the will power, which is needed to get out of the mess it has landed in.