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The Prime Minister Narendra Modi is back to India after attending the Asean conference in Malaysia at observer and also two day visit to Singapore. He went though the usual routines that he follows on his visits to other countries. He never misses the opportunity to address the local Indian community in he visits. Observers will have to wait for results to flow in of his visits. The official media, Door Darshan accompanies on his foreign visits has to and does also efficiently present one sided picture. Only time will tell the real story.

KOLKATA: It is tempting to compare the state assembly elections in Bihar with the parliamentary elections in neighbouring Myanmar. In both the polls the ruling parties were decimated. Coincidentally, the Myanmar polls were held on November 8, the same day that the Bihar poll results were announced.

It seems that a 14 per cent service tax is not enough for the government to provide a minimum service to keep the country clean. And, hence is the new ‘Swachh Bharat’ cess of 0.5 per cent over and above the service tax. Few will disagree that the services provided by the India government to its people are little if compared with those by other nine countries above India in terms of normal GDP in US dollars. This is despite the fact that India boasts among the highest national service tax regimes in most major economies. The worst still is the end-of-the-year extra-budgetary imposition of service tax or cess from Mid-November to ostensibly keep the country clean (Swachh Bharat) is meant to collect Rs. 3,800 crore or more in just 4.5 remaining months of the current financial year.

India's grim exports scenario this financial year has at last woken up the government from tis slumber and rightly announced three per cent interest subsidy. With India's exports declining for the eleventh month running in October and no immediate recovery visible in the near future, the government decided to give a leg up to this declining exports by announcing the interest subsidy for five years providing that much head room for exporters to plan their strategy. This cheaper credit under the interest equalisation scheme, approved by the cabinet committee on economic affairs on Thursday will be available from April one this year for both pre and post shipment rupee export credit.

It would be purely an act of desperate political naiveté to construe that the Congress winning 27 seats in Bihar assembly would resurrect the party in Bihar and restore its old glory. This victory has given the party a major boost. But to get back the lost ground the leadership ought to reorient the class composition of the state leadership and strive hard to make its presence felt. Rahul Gandhi must admit that the Congress got the seats because of its joining the alliance. No doubt for the JD(U) and Nitish Kumar the 8 per cent committed Congress voters had its own importance, but it was the compulsion of survival that forced the Congress to join hands with the Mahagathbandhan.

It will not be till 2018 that the BJP and the Congress, purportedly the two poles of Indian politics, will meet in a frontal confrontation in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) in Kerala continues to bleed from ‘internal injuries’ sustained in the local bodies election battle.

A series of assembly elections are due in next two years. It is clear that in none of the poll-bound states, Congress can get majority on its own. The party has, therefore, to forge Bihar type of combination in other states too. After the success of Bihar experiment, Congress is now exploring the possibilities of alliance in the states going to polls in March and April next year. Discussions are on in at various levels to forge alliance with like-minded parties in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Assam. In Kerala, the Congress is already heading a six-party ruling alliance—United Democratic Front (UDF).

One of the major cause for BJP’s debacle in the recent elections to the Bihar state assembly was that Prime Minister Modi’s assurance of acche din – good days - did not reach the people at the grassroots level. The people of the country gave BJP a bumper victory in the last parliamentary polls with the hope that they would soon see cherish the fruits of development assured by the Prime Minister. But their hopes were belied. Modi wave gradually started declining. He did launch ambitious programmes like Make in India, Digital India, Swacch Bharat (Clean India) Smart Cities. But these programmes have long gestation periods and need patience to wait for the results. People want immediate results on the ground. These programme need huge investments from both domestic and foreign sources. Efforts were done to simplify the project clearance procedures and attract foreign direct investments. The result was that Modi began to be perceived as an advocate of crony capitalism. In immediate term no such projects fructified to augment the promised job opportunity.

It is essential to step back a little to examine, understand and evaluate what is happening around the world of currency. At the end of the current month, the International Monetary Fund will take a call on inclusion of China’s currency, the remenbi or in short yuan, in its SDR (Special Drawing Rights) basket. Earlier in 2010, the IMF had summarily rejected China’s bid to get yuan in the SDR.