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KOLKATA: Diplomacy may have won the day for Russia more than financial/technological reasons, in bagging the order to build two nuclear power generating stations in Bangladesh by 2022-23.

Malevolent stars have sharpened their gaze at the Modi government and the BJP. Achche Din prime minister had promised on assuming office 20 months ago have already turned into Bure Din for the country’s economy. The ruling BJP has also not remained unaffected by the Bure Din as its political and electoral fortunes have been on the downslide.

The Prime Minister is driving the country towards a rapid economic development but the major roadblock in his path is the nature of political, economic and social institutions. He would need to change the despotic political structure; all entries banned kind of economic institutions; and the archaic social structures.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Two down. How many more? This is the question resonating in the power corridors of Kerala after the resignation of Excise Minister, K. Babu, in the infamous bar bribery scandal. The first casualty was Finance Minister K M Mani who exited only after much persuasion and virtual ultimatums.

Swiss banks may not be too happy with India’s latest round of searches for big Indian accounts there. But, largely impoverished India’s endless gold hunt, especially at a time when the global economy and trade are shrinking and stock markets around the world are going topsy-turvy following economic slow-down in China, has placed the Geneva-based World Gold Council on top of the world. India’s gold import last month hit a new 120-day high at nearly $4 billion while all other imports to the country shrank by over 15 per cent in value. The massive gold import by bullion merchants, mostly from Mumbai and Ahmedabad, widened the country’s trade deficit to $11.7 billion in just one month. In the pre-reform period, India’s annual trade deficit rarely topped $5 billion. During the current financial year 2015-16, the total gold import bill alone may come close to India’s total crude oil import cost. The gold import may suck up close to $50 billion, if not more, from the Reserve Bank of India’s modest foreign exchange reserves this year even as the Indian currency is set fall further to Rs 70 for a US Dollar, this year.

In a voice choked with (feigned?) emotion, Narendra Modi told the Ambedkar University convocation last Friday that Rohith Vemula was forced to take his own life. But he did not specify who forced the Dalit student although the prime minister knew that the “culprits” were in his cabinet. Moreover, they are likely to continue in their posts despite their guilt – unless they are booked for the abetment of suicide.

Even fistful of salt can make a vast difference to the political fortunes of competing parties in the electoral arena. The deprival of the fistful of salt to poor families that they used to get from a bania shop for five paisa only two decades earlier is a symbolic inability of politicians to perceive mismatch between their policies and needs of vast masses of India. Several such examples can easily be ferreted out of the system of governance and plethora of restrictive laws and regulations imposed in the last six decades. Yet it would be impossible to drive the understanding down the heads of most politicians who seem to be concerned with the elite who do not participate in voting and yet all schemes and social welfare schemes deliver benefits to them and the poor remain deprived of even basic amenities though they enthusiastically participate in governance through their votes.

The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has constituted a committee with Shyam Benegal as Chairperson to help evolve broad guidelines/procedure within the ambit of the Cinematograph Act 1952 and Cinematograph (Certification) Rules 1983. Readers ought to be reminded that in February 2013 the Government of India had appointed another committee with Justice Mukul Mudgal as Chairperson to hold a full review of Indian Cinematograph Act 1952. The Mudgal Committee had appended in its Report of September 2013 a draft Cinematograph Act to replace the 1952 Act; but it also recommended that the central government should issue suitable directions guiding the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) regarding sanctioning of films for public exhibition.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The efforts of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam (SNDP) to forge a third front in Kerala have suffered a slew of setbacks.

NEW DELHI: Is India’s national carrier Air India heading towards a slow but certain death after more than six decades of unhindered service? If so, the Government is itself to blame.