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LUCKNOW: BJP high command is worried with thin attendance at ongoing parivartan yatras in Uttar Pradesh where party has high stake due to forthcoming assembly polls in early 2017.

Home Minister Rajnath Singh told a conference of DGPs and IGPs in Hyderabad last month that naxalites will be eliminated in five years. This is a tall claim and will only reinforce their resolve to stay strong.

The Full page ad of a consumer company reads “Let’s pamper the little ones, Cash Free”. The message is loud and clear the growth of India’s cash less banking depends on the expansion and consolidation of the GenNext. The present purchaser base cannot shoulder the weight and compulsions of the capitalist economy. Obviously to accomplish the task, the government has resorted to the cliché Catch then young.

The sudden end of charismatic Jayalalithaa, at the height of her glorious stewardship of Tamil Nadu cast a gloom for her adored millions while her compelling national stature equally raised concerns for political stability in this font-line state.

The BJP leaders, Prime Minister downwards, trumpet, day in and day out, the delights of cooperative federalism. But the yawning gap between their profession and practice is as reprehensible as it is shocking.

The Modi Government’s unabashed use of technology for the economy, emblematic of its recent decision to demonetize high denomination notes and triggering off a tumult across the nation in a bid to propel people to cashless dealings, is no doubt in keeping with his declared credo of minimum government and maximum governance. His digital predilections right from the run-up to his electoral battle in May 2014 and till date manifest in various acts of his government is no doubt desirable. But in a country where the use of mobile phone has penetrated into far-flung areas with no matching spurt in literacy and numeracy among millions of people eking out their existence on the margins of mundane life, technology provides no solution to the complexities of quotidian life. But this does not necessarily invalidate the immense use to which technology could be harnessed in building the physical infrastructure and other basic parameters of development such as health and education to innumerable people who do not see any shaft of light in their somber day-to-day living.

Mongolia’s relations with China have taken a hit after Ulan Bator stuck to its decision to welcome the Dalai Lama, insisting that the visit was ‘purely religious in nature’ and had nothing to do with politics. The Dalai Lama went to Mongolia on a four-day visit last month. China was dead opposed to the visit of the Buddhist holy leader and wanted Mongolia to ‘scrap’ the visit.

Like love for mother, loyalty to the country is an innate sentiment. Its inborn nature permeates society and is imbibed by every individual from childhood. No one seeks a rational explanation for the overt display of devotion to the land of one’s birth by standing up when the national anthem is played. Instead, it is mentally absorbed in the early years of one’s life by seeing how homage is paid to the nation and then becomes a kind of conditioned reflex.

Important proceedings in the Parliament of India, the supreme legislative body of the world’s largest democracy, seem to have been held hostage by a persistent protestation pyrotechnic unfurled by the elected political opposition both in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha for the most part of the majority BJP-led NDA government since it came to power in May 2014. The opposition spares nothing – from the prime minister’s foreign trips to the current demonetisation of two high value currency notes, Rs.1,000 and Rs.500 – to disrupt important sessions in Parliament which sits only four times a year. Rajya Sabha, where the opposition has a bigger strength than the NDA, the ruling cliché, has remained nearly paralysed. In Lok Sabha, in which the NDA has over two-third majority, less than two dozen opposition MPs have been persistently shouting in the well almost daily during its sessions to disrupt the proceedings. This is unfortunate and must stop for the healthy operation of Parliament, recognized as the citadel of democracy. Forceful debates and learned discussions should, instead, tear into wrong anti-common man policies of the government in power in the highest tradition of democracy. Nearly 50 important bills are pending before the House, some of them are for many years. Neither the government, nor the opposition seem to be keen on moving them to become law.

The distress for the millions worsens –getting cash from banks, even within the weekly limits set by RBI, to meet their urgent needs – into the second month of the “revolutionary” demonetisation of November 8.