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More than 34 months after the installation of the Narendra Modi Government at the centre, the employment generation scenario in the country has turned pathetic with no signs of concrete programmes of job generation to employ the lakhs of youth who are joining the new workforce every year, fresh from schools, colleges and the technical institutes. On the other hand, the existing job opportunities are shrinking leading as a result of lay-offs and job cuts in both organized and unorganized sectors. In addition to this, the Hindutva policies of the BJP led Centre and the state governments have led to the closure of thousands of meat shops in different states leading to the job losses for the poor most of whom belong to the minority community. Overall, the employment scenario is grim though the Finance Minister Arun Jaitley is talking of more than 7 per cent growth in economy and the Prime Minister is boasting of Digital India.

When Narendra Modi took over as Prime Minister on May 26, 2014, he surprised everyone by inviting the heads of state from the neighbouring countries for his swearing in ceremony sending a signal that he is keen on ‘neighbours first’ concept. He had also taken it forward by visiting most of the neighbouring countries and improving the neighbourhood ties. . After seven and a half years of gap, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina will be visiting India from April 7 to 10. For both Hasina and Modi this will be an important visit to showcase the improved neighbourhood ties.

New Delhi: Parliamentary Standing Committee Chairman for Agriculture Hukumdeo Narayan Yadav has praised RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat for his bold statement supporting inter-caste marriages in India.

CHANDIGARH: India is being turned into a theocratic state which the BJP’s ideological mentor RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat has been ‘euphemistically’(?) describing as “Hindu Rashtra”. Signs of the ‘radical change’ have been emerging since Narendra Modi’s assumption of prime ministership three years ago. The situation took a worrisome form last month with the elevation of the extremist saffron cleric Yogi Adityanath, head of the Gorakhnath Math as Chief Minister of India’s most populous heartland state of Uttar Pradesh. The controversial Yogi has been facing criminal cases for his provocative and communal utterances.

Of late, public sector banks are being accused and abused almost daily by one government body or the other for running huge non-performing assets or bad loans although the accumulation of such large stricken loans has not taken place overnight — not certainly during the 34-month-old BJP-led government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Quizzically, the campaign is being orchestrated by the very owners of these banks, the government. On the face of it, this is unusual and also unnerving. Ministers, Reserve Bank officials, finance ministry, NITI Ayog and the year-old Banks Board Bureau satraps have all joined the orchestra against ‘bad banks’ and ‘bad loans’. Even a private banker, Uday Kotak, recently took part in the chorus voicing concern about public sector ‘bad banks’ and the amount required for their loan-loss provisioning. If the purpose of this unusual campaign by the government is to get those ‘bad banks’ merged with other better managed ones, it is certainly an unwarranted exercise.

India has entered a penultimate fiscal year on April 1, 2017, which may largely determine the shape of things to come in 2019, as the triumphant Modi Government steps up its relentless majoritarian drives in every sphere while the country lacks an effective and credible opposition to assert civil rights and safeguard constitutional values, wherever necessary.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi envisions a new and reconfigured India after the clean sweep of the Uttar Pradesh assembly election by the BJP. Though he foresaw empowerment of dalit, poor and youth workforce as the basic components of the New India, he was quite ambiguous and did not elucidate the basic character and basis of the proposed New India. What would happen to the tenets and ethos that India has been practising and following during these years. How it would be different from the old India? What should be the components and ideals that would shape the new India?

Can Hindutva deliver development in the long run? Perhaps not. Let us examine this question in the context of BJP’s landslide victory in Uttar Pradesh. The BJP’s staggering win in UP is supposedly the result of a message of Hindutva plus economic aspirations. Hindu consolidation by the Singh on the ground and economic aspiration embodied by Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the winning formula. Modi in Delhi, Yogi in Lucknow is the slogan.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: For once, the Left Democratic front(LDF) Government got its timing right. The Government led by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan neatly outsmarted the Opposition on an issue which could have become greatly embarrassing for it.

BHOPAL: A grand show was organised at Jait, home village of chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan to mark the completion of 100 days of Narmada Yatra. It was a mega show attended by politicians, bureaucrats' eminent persons and thousands of party workers. Morarji Bapu was the star attraction of the event at Jait.