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India is endowed with a strong and stable Government but it needs to take a re-look on its governance and policies to tackle multiple challenges preserving democratic norms and ensuring its key policies, which command a broader national appeal during a necessary phase of critically addressing the left-over social and economic backwardness.

The first quarter of the third year of the tenure of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi is not going well for the BJP. Mr. Modi’s personal rating may not fallen much but the BJP’s image has nosedived and this is reflected in the results of the local level elections in the three states- Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat which are BJP strongholds and going for elections to the state assemblies during the next two years. The attacks by the Sangh Parivar activists on the dalits have further given a jolt to the Modi-Amit Shah duo’s grand plan to bring dalits within their political influence taking the 2019 Lok Sabha elections in view.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Expansion of a political front is a legitimate political objective in coalition politics. But when it is sought to be achieved by diluting commitment to the cause, then you are chipping away at your own mass base.

The final conflict, said Ignazio Silone, the Italian author, would be between the communists and ex-communists. India has seen a number of such conflicts among votaries of the Left, leading to the splintering of the communist movement.

The government’s latest bid to amend labour laws and regulations, including overtime work rules, in order to improve the ease of doing business in India concerns mostly the highly organized sector workforce and where bi-partite and tri-partite wage settlements hold the key to good industrial relations. However, before Parliament approves such bills, it is important that the government must clearly explain how the existing labour laws and practices are standing in the way of easing the doing of normal business by entrepreneurs in India and also what are the other factors that are choking organized sector industrial production. Labour as a factor of production plays little role in the country today in improving an organized sector firm’s top and bottom lines. Indirect and direct taxes, import dumping, poor and high cost infrastructure, high power rates, non-availability of important industrial inputs, shrinking export markets and falling local investor sentiment are playing a much bigger role in choking the country’s industrial production and growth. Economy is becoming increasingly dependant on foreign direct investors. The government is, for the first time, under serious pressure from these investors to ease the ways the business is done in the country.

India has made myriad strides in all walks of life, agriculture, science, technology, education, trade, commerce, industry, and socio-economic development and is now one with the globalised world, its economy having been opened to the world and linked to the market forces. Development in major economies does affect India as well. In the process, country’s destiny is linked to the globalised economy. Yet, it is noteworthy that during the last 69 years since Independence on August 15, 1947, the country’s growth and prosperity have not trickled down to alleviate poverty, disparity, illiteracy, and malnutrition as envisaged in the successive annual plans.

Diplomatic circles in Kathmandu, capital of the evolving republic of Nepal, have zoomed in on the fast-changing politico-financial scenario of the Himalayan state during the interregnum between now and mid-October this year, when the President of People’s Republic of China Xi Jinping is scheduled to visit Nepal with a sizable delegation. Apparently, the trip is to strengthen bilateral ties covering economic and financial co-operation, but more important is the probable diplomatic shift towards China. Obviously, the status of India in the Himalayan diplomacy is bound to weaken. But to what extent is the shift likely? That’s the big question before the Indian diplomats.

Changing place names is not unknown in human history. In India, more recently, the renaming of places, cities, states and even streets, has been largely projected as an attempt to redress past wrongs. There was thrill in renaming of Harrington street in the then Calcutta as Ho Chi Minh Street. Constantinople was named as Istanbul.

With the cow smuggling to Bangladesh reduced this year to only about 10 per cent of earlier levels, the Centre is largely satisfied. However, there still remains some concern over the ineffective policing in several areas, mostly in West Bengal, where it has not been possible to stop illegal livestock trafficking totally.

India allowing Lockheed, the US military company, to set up shop and start production of F-16 under the prime minister, Narendra Modi’s “make in India” programme would be the first major move to buy a military technology which has turned obsolete in the original country and rejected by its defence establishment. What is worse the Indian government would be infusing huge FDI fund in the project. It is really distressing that government instead of promoting and developing indigenous technologies was investing to sponsor the market forces having capitalist vested interest.