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Times could hardly be more unpropitious than at present for China to be at the helm of G-20 when Its own slowdown, tumbling asset market and volatile currency are adding to risks for even the weakened global growth getting derailed in 2016.

Haryana is boiling over the Jat quota agitation and it has an echo in Delhi and elsewhere with 19 lives lost apart from the economic damage of about Rs 200 crores. Agitation for caste- based quota is not new to India and many remember the 1990 Mandal agitation during the VP Singh regime.

BHOPAL: Yet another session of Madhya Pradesh Vidhan Sabha began on February 23. Speculation is rife whether this session will be able to pay attention to various pressing problems of the people of the state or will end without transacting any business as happened in the past.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: An outward show of optimism notwithstanding, all the Constituents of the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) are rocked by seat-sharing problems.

The Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave a vent to his anguish while addressing farmers in Odisha. He spoke for the first time in 20 years of difficulties in governance. He even complained of efforts by vested interests and some NGOs to topple his government. It was apparent that he was disturbed by the recent events. He did mention that his attempts to root out corruption from politics and administration had aroused angers and attempts to topple his government. Media men immediately jumped to the conclusion that he was berating at opposition without naming anyone in particular. However his reference to aroused passions over his attempts to root out corruption is significant. Only power wielders are affected by tampering with levers of corruption from the system. Those in opposition or outside the administrative structures do not have opportunity or power levers to indulge in corrupt practices. Does it mean that he was hinting at the internal forces at work who were not allowing him to function with full authority and effectively?

What was feared is happening. Under the Modi-led government, India is facing an Emergency-like situation, or even worse. Dissenting voices are being suppressed. Goons in black robes thrash students, their sympathizers and journalists, including women reporters, within court’s precincts with the police watching as spectators. Short of acting like Gestapo (Hitler’s feared secret police force), the police has been turned into political arm of the ruling party at the Centre and in some states like Punjab where the Akali-BJP alliance is in power. Our leaders need to be reminded of the noted writer Salman Rushdie words “What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist”.

Bernie Sanders is a phenomenon now in the United States of America’s Presidential elections campaign. Like the UK’s Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, Sanders has emerged all of a sudden from obscurity and has now taken the centre stage in the US presidential campaign as a Democratic Party candidate fighting primaries against formidable Hillary Clinton. To the seasoned observers of the US presidential elections through the years, Sanders has brought about a real political revolution in the mindset of the ordinary Americans and never before the issue of inequality was so forcefully put in the election agenda by any presidential candidate. Sanders has declared himself as a socialist- a democratic socialist but his economic and social agenda fully reflects the concerns of a genuine leftist which he is. Like his British counterpart Jeremy Corbyn, Sanders is unscathing in his attacks on money power, against the bankers and the billionaires who have been ruling the USA for decades.

Indian banking industry particularly the predominantly public sector banks (PSBs) are at the crossroads with their flanks exposed to market mayhem in the wake of their worst third quarter results. Bank after bank—be it the big ones or the relatively mid-sized ones vied with one anothr in presenting a gloomy balance sheet that rattled their registered scrips in the country’s major bourses. In a sense, the third quarter of 2015-16 marks a morose chapter in their post-nationalization annals, bringing down the curtain on their complacent business-as-usual approach as being the sovereign arm of the government.

The national budget preparation for 2016-17 is appearing to be a daunting task before Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in view of somewhat unprecedented ensemble of pre-budget economic and political turn of events. Few finance ministers in the past have faced a situation as difficult and tricky as the current one with economic positives being heavily overshadowed by a host of negatives on which the present government seems to have little control. The massive bad loans on the books of public sector banks; stock market collapse; poor performance of the core, manufacturing and infrastructure sectors; falling exports for 14 months in a row; high retail inflation; steadily sliding Rupee; rising gold import; unemployment and growing political campaign against the government – from the president’s rule in Arunachal Pradesh to the police action at Delhi’s JNU — by the opposition seems to have overtaken some good work done by the Centre on the opening up of economy, ease of doing business, financial inclusion and transparency in policy making and execution.

Only someone like the Union human resource development minister, Smriti Irani, who has read up to Class XII can believe that the answer to the pretentious antics of a tiny group of adolescents is to hoist the national flag. The decision of the minister and the vice-chancellors of central universities to respond to the student unrest in New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and the Hyderabad central university by flying a large tricolour in these and other universities suggests that they haven’t a clue as to how to deal with disaffected youths.