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It seems the wheel is completing the full circle in West Bengal: the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) is all set to delay the impending elections to 17 municipalities, worried about the BJP's new found strength.

The CPI(Maoist) Party, which is outlawed in India, has its own weapons manufacturing devices called the Technical Research and Arms Manufacturing (TRAM) units across the country in the Left Wing Extremist (LWE) States. The TRAM caters to the weapons and ammunition requirements of the CPI (Maoist) over and above the arms and ammunitions that the Maoists seize from the Police and Central Para Military Forces in the LWE States.

The more the Congress talks of change the more nothing changes. The reaction from the party after its worst debacle confirms it. Of course no one expected the party to get rid of the dynasty, as it is the only uniting factor. So the dynasty continues despite the fading charm of the family. Also changing the leadership is not the answer. What is needed is a complete overhaul of the party and also its style of functioning, which is not in step with the aspirational class of voters.

If you have been watching the prime time news coverage during the last Lok Sabha election season, you couldn’t have missed the sight of a nattily dressed endocrinologist on TV screen peddling during commercial breaks diabetes cure and directly soliciting patients for his private wellness centre. How could the ministry of health and the medical council of India (MCI), the regulator, allow such an atrocious ad in gross violation of professional ethic by the concerned doctor? Under the law and codes of ethics created by self-regulatory professional bodies and institutes set up by acts of Parliament, soliciting clients by doctors, lawyers, chartered accountants, company secretaries and stockbrokers is a punishable offence. But, the excessive importance attached to commerce, high personal lifestyle and endless greed for money, under the corrupt Congress-led economic reform system has taken better of professional ethics, leading to an all round decay in moral rectitude in the society and massive corruption in professional and public life.

With 2014 Lok Sabha election ending on a high and all the sound and the fury finally abating, a few conspicuous characters of this year’s election are beginning to surface. Apart from the one-sided victory for Modi-led BJP and the dismal performance of almost all the other political parties except for a few local ones like TMC or AIADMK, one of the most significant phenomena, in retrospect, seems to be the noticeable increase in the poll percentage from last parliamentary election of 2009. In fact, with more than 66 per cent voter turnout in aggregate, this year’s election had witnessed the highest polling percentage in the history of the nation. And although we often like to harp on the diversity of the nation in order to refrain from drawing any general conclusion, from the result it was quite obvious that a general trend was followed throughout most part of the country. Call it Modi wave or anti-incumbency, the unequivocal mandate raises the question, are we, at least as electorate, losing the heterogeneity that was characteristic of us?

KOLKATA: In post Lok Sabha polls Bengal, the question that puzzles most observers is, why did the BJP’s surge decimate the CPI(M)-led Left Front, leaving the ruling Trinamool Congress and the Congress relatively unscathed?

The return of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in particular in an electrifying electoral result that took the world by surprise has demonstrably re-established India’s firm shift to right and conservative economic policy. Since Independence, India has seldom given such a decisive say to any conservative economic ideology as mostly it had been content with joint-sector ideology or left-of- centre ones with no pronounced predilection for pure rightist tack for economic development. Not that any such tilt towards right could be politically suicidal that it was skirted by successive governments. Like the obsessive concern with secularism that invariably led to pseudo-secularism so much so that even minorities had lost faith in it, the political parties that ruled the country either alone on their strength till 1977 or much later with the dawn of coalition era governance must perforce trade in left-of-centre or centre-left or left-right mix of policies to give the façade of concern for the poorest of the poor who constitute the largest chunk of the country’s population.

The decline in Muslim representation in the Lok Sabha to the level of 23, accounting for a mere 4.4% of the entire strength of the Lower House of the Indian Parliament after the just concluded 2014 general elections has given rise to concerns among the Muslim clerics and the so-called secularist sympathizers.

If one person can be singled out for blame for the Congress’s defeat, it is Sonia Gandhi. There are others, too, such as Manmohan Singh who failed to speak up even when he realized that she was taking a wrong turn. But, the primary responsibility for the party’s worst ever performance is hers.

LUCKNOW: The verdict of the Lok Sabha 2014 polls verdict gave a rude shock to three prime ministerial candidates, Rahul Gandhi of the Congress, Mayawati of the BSP and Mulayam Singh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party. All three potential candidates failed miserably in front of the tsunami that swept the state, Narendra Modi’s wave.