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NEW DELHI: This year’s Railway Budget seems all set to give lip-service to development. Bullet trains, which are the preserves of the affluent citizens of the country, would definitely give wings to imagination of all, but fail to serve the purpose to ensure the greatest happiness to the largest number of travellers, which quality good governance demands. This demand is also the call of democracy.

Challenging developments across the world, with rising battle zones and growing risks of volatility in financial markets and oil prices, now threaten an orderly pace of growth recovery for emerging nations like India, at a time the advanced economies themselves, chiefly USA, face headwinds.

The UPA allies are leaving the sinking ship looking for better opportunities. The latest to do so is the National Conference. Others are not far behind as the already shrunk Congress-led UPA will soon realise. The Congress party remains almost isolated with barely a handful of allies like Muslim League and RJD and NCP.

Material progress and social progress are two diametrically different propositions altogether that the success in one does not reflect analogous and distinct improvements in the other unless conscious efforts are put in place to lift all sections of society to a decent standard of living. While the gross domestic product (GDP) growth captures material progress, the social progress is being captured in a new concept called human index development. To some extent most of the advanced countries had struck balance between the two, even as emerging economies including India and China and a host of developing countries and the least developed countries (LDCs) continue to wage a uphill battle to fulfill the aspirations of legions of their people. Invariably these people struggle to make both ends meet when they are at the mercy of market and mercantilist forces that rule the roost in their economies. The latest report of the Washington-based International Food Policy Research institute (IFPRI) put India in a dismal slot of 63rd out of 78 countries at the Global Human Index (GHI)alongside many African and sub-Saharan countries.

KOLKATA: The two-year-long campaign of the Congress dissidents in Assam to oust Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi came to a denouement on Monday, July 21. In the morning the dissident-in-chief and aspirant for the Chief Minister’s chair, Himanta Biswa Sarma, met the Governor with 28 fellow-dissidents. (The number is important because the dissidents had been claiming support of 56 Congress MLAs out of 78 in a House of 126.) Sarma came out of the meeting and went straightaway to address a crowded press conference. What he said was contradictory and confusing.

When Narendra Modi made one of his first thoughts on the required changes in the country’s economic policy public before he was sworn in as the Prime Minister, it was about the need to ease gold imports. The PM-designate’s views seemed to have immediately served as a pointer to the administration which the UPA left behind for Modi to inherit. Modi’s reference to easing gold import probably made some top bureaucrats in the finance and commerce ministries to privately liken Modi to UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi when it came to exhibiting passion for the yellow metal.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: After a brief and surprising lull, the Congress leaders in Kerala are back at their bickering best.

The BJP’s friends such as the RSS have been advising it against trying to form a government in Delhi with the help of defectors from the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Congress, but the saffron outfit’s initial reluctance to go for fresh polls is worth analyzing.

KOLKATA: West Bengal has earned many dubious distinctions during the 38-months long Trinamool Congress (TMC) rule.

BRICS have laid the foundation for a New Development Bank at its sixth Summit at Fortaleza. But let’s not forget that it needs much to be done by India in the long run to derive benefits from the proposals and position itself as a leader of hope for the developing and emerging economies.