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Shiv Sena and NCP could not have committed a bigger mistake than snapping their time-tested alliance with the BJP and the Congress respectively. The Shiv Sena-BJP alliance is 25 years old and its split marks end of a robust and stormy era in coalition politics in Maharashtra. Likewise 15-year-old Congress and NCP alliance saw many ups and downs and survived many a crisis. NCP had also remained a dependable ally of the Congress at the centre through thick and thin, enabling the UPA government to survive. Paths of both parties are different now.

The recent incident of Jadavpur University, though expanded into a separate phenomenon of students’ dissent altogether, essentially began as a protest against the entrenched patriarchy in the field of academia. From an outsider’s point of view, the academic centres of excellence often appear to be institutes devoted to pristine form of knowledge and wisdom devoid of the burden of hegemonies of mundane outside world.

Maharashtra is now headed for the assembly elections on October 15 this year which will be marked by unprecedented bitterness and mudslinging between the contesting political parties as all the major political parties have broken their respective alliances to fight on their own.BJP has severed its pact with Shiv Sena while the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) has announced that its alliance with the Congress Party is over. The last day of nomination is September 27 and there is a big rush among all the four major parties to field candidates in the assembly constituencies.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrives in the United States of America on September 26, on a landmark visit, as a strong leader of the world’s largest democracy, with a dynamically changing economy and widely acknowledged global power status. The Obama Administration is giving a red carpet welcome to the Indian leader.

LUCKNOW: BJP leaders feel that aggressive dose of Hindutva and making Yogi Adityanath as main face of BJP in the by-elections were main factors behind the tremendous loss of party in recently concluded by-elections in Uttar Pradesh.

It is extremely unusual of a governor of a country’s central bank, who normally carries an image of a conservative tough-talking and always word-watching stiff-necked super monetary regulator, to constantly making public statements and sermonizing the government! Why is the present Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor, Raghuram Govinda Rajan, handpicked for the coveted job by ex-finance minister Palaniappan Chidambaram and former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, acting flippant often to the consternation of the new government, his inheritor? Behind his well-groomed formal appearance, Rajan appears to be most informal and accessible person promoting a trait that is generally considered unsuitable for the high post. During this month of September alone, the RBI governor has made nearly a dozen public statements, several of them being directly critical of the government. His statements also rendered unsolicited advises to the government. And, at least one of them had a spine-chilling impact on the Indian business community, known for using the historically high debt-equity ratio norms to their best advantage to multiply personal wealth at the cost of lenders to their interconnected group enterprises by fudging accounts and creating false mortgages.

It may take a decade or more to re-create a smaller residuary Andhra Pradesh, with massive funding required to build a modern capital involving acquisition of 50,000 acres or more of fertile and waste lands in and around Vijayawada. TDP Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu is taking on a mighty challenge even as the Centre remains largely apathetic at present.

Barely 100 days after scoring a stunning Lok Sabha victory, the Bharatiya Janata Party has suffered its third successive—and heaviest—defeat in state Assembly byelections. Of the 33 Assembly seats where elections were held in nine states on September 13, the BJP won just 12 seats, down from 25. It suffered a rout in Uttar Pradesh (UP) and Rajasthan, and sustained losses in Gujarat—the very states that had voted it overwhelmingly to national power in May.

So, the children of Babur (Babur ki aulad), as the BJP and the RSS-led Sangh parivar used to call the Muslims during the Ramjanmabhoomi agitation, are patriots, after all, as Narendra Modi has said in a recent interview. Why has the prime minister initiated this transition from M.S. Golwalkar’s characterization of Muslims as an “internal threat” to the high status of a community which is willing to live and die for India?

Following the Arab Spring that began in December 2011, the situation in West Asia and North Africa, particularly in Iraq and Syria is taking an ugly turn and has not only put Indian diplomacy to test but is also likely to pose a challenge to India’s security concerns and economic interests. The region has brought both the local and external powers in the play. The sectarian divide between the Sunnis and the Shias has aggravated the situation to question the Sykes-Picot boundaries between the existing nation states. Further the formation of the Caliphate by the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) is an indication that the delicate problem may not be resolved in the immediate future. Adding to India’s security concerns is the Sunni terrorist organisation, Al Qaida forming its new arm for the Indian sub-continent.