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In India, Mr Donald Trump – the Republican candidate for US President elections - has drawn more attentions among the politicians, analysts, think-tanks and media than Mrs Hillary Clinton – Democratic candidate for the elections. Unlike the previous US Presidential elections, the Indian analysts are in confusion over the impact of the election. They are unable to reach any realistic forecast for the USA’s next strategic move towards India, given the neck to neck contest.

There is a stark similarity between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat and the RSS’s imprint on functioning of government is quite visible. Both Modi and Bhagwat go back a long way; both were born in September 1950 and Modi was groomed in the Sangh by Bhagwat’s father—Madhukar—who was prant pracharak in Gujarat. Bhagwat is known to have pushed Modi’s candidature as the BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate over L K Advani’s. His reasoning was that the older generation has to change.

The most acrimonious of the US Presidential elections campaign is drawing to a close and the registered American voters with more than a million of Indians, will be voting on November 8 to choose their future President of the country for a period of four years. The contest is essentially between the Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton and the Republican Donald Trump though there are two other candidates. This US Presidential poll outcome is going to have immense impact on the global polity, international security and the domestic policies in America. Donald Trump has broken the convention of a normal conservative neo-liberal of Republican variety, his policies, speeches and programmes are destined to take America backwards instead of Making America Great and along with this, he will opt for the easy way out by hitting at the immigrants and the religious minorities, especially Muslims in order to appease the uneducated white Americans. If Trump wins this crucial election, the US will be witnessing a social turmoil with the potential of violent clashes taking place between colour and religions.

This is Yatra Time for the Bihar chief minister, Nitish Kumar. He has always preferred November, an auspicious month, to meet and interact with the people and also to galvanise JD(U) at the grass root level. With no heat and humidity, he can safely move from one corner of the state to the other.

Dalai Lama’s proposed visit to Arunachal Pradesh next year has expectedly raised heckles of China which has remained a sworn enemy of the tallest Buddhist leader ever since he sought refuse in India in 1959.

Whatever may be the truth about the escape of eight SIMI suspects of terrorism and ultimately their killing in a claimed encounter near Bhopal, one thing has become clear that the Narendra Modi government and its patron-in-chief RSS along with its different outfits are bent upon to exploit each and every incident to push through their agenda of communal polarization and branding the entire spectrum of opposition as anti-national.

What is common between the Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal and Tamil Nadu former Deputy Chief Minister M.K. Stalin? They are all waiting to succeed their illustrious parents.

Development expenditure of Indian Railways in each financial year is funded through annual plan, as announced in the Budget, through three sources, Gross Budgetary Support (GBS), Internal Generation of Revenue from freight and passenger traffic and Extra Budgetary Resources (EBR). Inadequacy of GBS and shortfalls in internal resource generation led Indian Railways to shift focus to EBR, for which Indian Railways Finance Corporation (IRFC) was set up in December 1986, which has raised cumulative funding to the Railways of over Rs. 1.50 lakh crore till the financial year 2015-16. In the current financial year 2016-17, IRFC has been given the target of mobilizing Rs.40,985 crore. As of now, Indian Railways have Rs.1.42 lakh crore of assets mostly rolling stocks, which have been leased by IRFC.

Once again the Christian organizations and the saffron brigade are standing face to face. But unlike the past, it is not the question of conversion of the adivasis; instead, it is the well designed move to take away the land rights of the tribals by amending the century-old Santhal and Chotanagpur Tenancy Acts, which protect their interest and ensures that they are not evicted from their lands.

The year 2016 will go down as a high-water-mark in history as Homo sapiens have at long last found a way out from the morass of inaction to lift themselves with a spark of hope for a better standard of life for all in their interminable struggle to preserve planetary balance. Signatories to the Paris accord of late 2015 undertook to limit global warming to well below 2 degree Celsius.