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LUCKNOW: Samajwadi Party national president Mulayam Singh Yadav is facing his biggest challenge in keeping his family united to face the 2017 assembly polls.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: It was a tongue-lashing the bickering Congress leaders in Kerala richly deserved.

Rahul Gandhi and his ilk in the Congress command may disagree, the non-alignment movement has lost much of its relevance in today’s world where national interest is dynamic as also key to diplomatic wisdom. If Narendra Modi has decided to skip the long journey to Venezuela to attend the forthcoming 17th summit meeting of so-called 120-odd non-aligned nations there, it only suggests that the Indian Prime Minister believes in dynamic diplomacy and not in a static tradition. Barring Charan Singh, all Indian prime ministers attended NAM summit. Modi is different. He proved his point on the very first day of his assuming the office by trying to engage Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and, thereafter, Chinese president Xi Jinping in order to improve diplomatic ties between India and its historically two hostile neighbours.

As the crucial assembly poll of 2017 in Uttar Pradesh draws near, political equations among the contesting parties are changing. Mayawati is confident that her party will get a majority while the UP’s youngest chief minister Akhilesh Yadav concedes that election 2017 will be hard to fight.

The central trade unions of the country are taking massive preparations to observe a one day general strike of the workers and the employees of the country on September 2 this year in support of their 12 point charter of demands. Though the official announcement was made by the central trade unions from their convention in New Delhi on March 30 this year and the trade union leaders had continuously approached the Narendra Modi government for negotiations so that the strike which will paralyse the national economy for a day , is avoided, but the NDA government has not cared to start any meaningful discussions on the charter of demands, rather the union labour minister has passed on the buck to the states by mentioning that most of the demands fall under the purview of the state governments.

Both Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe are known for their great leap in the economic reforms. Both were sailing on the same boat for the urgency of reforms, even though the aims of reforms are different. Both vowed to bold reforms to bring their economies on a sustainable growth trajectory .Mr Modi’s main reform agenda is Make in India and Japanese Prime Minister Abe’s main reform agenda is 3 Arrow economy, dubbed “Abenomics'.

True to his style of speaking, without any restraint, this time, on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of Indian Independence, Prime Minister Narendra Modi raised the issue of human rights violation in Balochistan, the restive province of Pakistan. Apparently this move of Modi is ordained to push Pakistan on back foot and also force it to respond to the accusation of perpetrating atrocities on the people of Balochistan and Pak occupied Kashmir (PoK). It also manifests the showcasing of the image of the macho-politics.

All is not well in Uttar Pradesh’s first family going by the pubic spats within the Samajwadi Party. With barely a few months to go, the feuds within the party supremo Mulayam Singh’s family may hurt its chances in the next year’s Assembly polls. It is one of the biggest political families in the country with at least 20 members including the sons, daughters-in-law, uncles and nephews holding public office.

BHOPAL: Is Babulal Gaur preparing to stage an open revolt against the Bharatiya Janata Party? His fiery speech at the conference of Yadavs held in Bhopal gives this indication. It may be mentioned here that Gaur was forced to resign from the Madhya Pradesh Ministry headed by Shivraj Singh Chauhan. Though he writes his surname as Gaur, he is Yadav by birth. In fact, once Gaur told this correspondent that Lalu Yadav advised him to stop using Gaur as his surname and start calling himself as Babulal Yadav. Though Gaur belongs to Uttar Pradesh, he shifted to Bhopal after his father took up some job in Bhopal.

Prime Minister, Narendra Modi is determined to alter the basic character of the Indian polity and also the multi polar character of India’s foreign policy. Though after the fall of Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR) the world had become unipolar, Indian foreign policy continued to be guided by the spirit of the non aligned policy. Unfortunately for the saffron government, this nonaligned policy was nothing but expression of the secular policy and politics. This has been the reason that Modi is out to reverse the process.