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The trip to Brazil, Peru, Colombia, and Chile by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang in May this year sought to follow up on the planned cooperation between China and CELAC (the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) arrived in January 2015. Plan’s main thrust is to increase bilateral trade to $500 billion and the inflow of Chinese direct investments to the region to $250 billion until 2025.

It is slowly becoming clear that Narendra Modi is pursuing the twin agenda of economic development and Hindu hyper-nationalism.

The Union Government in the Ministry of Law and Justice is developing a National Judicial Grid to make details of cases and judgments readily available on real-time basis to any person anywhere. This is intended to help in avoiding duplication in work and saving time and money of the courts and litigants.

The 70th session of the United Nations General Assembly – with its highlight on adoption of a post-2015 sustainable Development Agenda -2030 – has again brought together world leaders, two of whom India’s Narendra Modi and China’s Xi Jinping dominated the American economic scene in late September, each wooing business and trying to get the best outcomes.

The manufacturing sector has been neglected in India for quite some time in the new century as all focus was on services sector and the Indian prominence in the information technology area. The focus has now again shifted to manufacturing and it is a welcome sign that both the Narendra Modi government at the highest level and the Indian industry are working on big plans to prepare a roadmap for giving a big boost to manufacturing by bridging the gap which adversely affected the growth of this vital sector in the Indian economy in the last decade.

For once RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat was right when he suggested that a non-political committee should be constituted to examine and determine which categories require reservation benefits and how long. Significantly, he chose to make the statement against the backdrop of the Patel agitation in Gujarat, demanding a relook at the reservation policy. Why so much of hullabaloo about his statement? Few can argue against Bhagwat’s assertion that reservations have been politicized and are not being implemented in the spirit of their original intention. Earlier, young Congress leader, Jitin Prasada too had asked his party to have a relook at the reservation policy. He had urged the party to evolve a new mechanism for social justice that focused on most backward castes and poor among upper castes. This is an explicit admission that quotas have come to be cornered by a few powerful OBC castes that dominate the administrative machinery.

Dr. Mahesh Rangrajan, director of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library outsmarted the culture minister Mahesh Sharma by demitting his office long before Mahesh Sharma could use his honour to take a pot shot at the Congress president Sonia Gandhi. Rangrajan retained his honour and thus frustrated the dirty political game though he had no involvement in politics and was concerned with his own self esteem only as it transpired in the meeting of Trustees of the NMML.

LUCKNOW: CBI’s decision to summon former chief minister Mayawati for interrogation in the multi-crore-rupee NRHM scam during her regime has brought back the debate of alleged misuse of CBI for political purposes.

The Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi has gone abroad once again after addressing a successful rally to celebrate the party’s victory over the withdrawal of the Land Acquisition Bill. Eyebrows are raised at this sudden foreign trip when the party is facing a crucial election in Bihar. Although Congress is a minor partner there is a danger of the party drawing blank, which will further demoralize the party workers. A good showing in Bihar polls would send a message to other states where the Congress is facing factionalism and indiscipline. The party leadership has to address this urgently or else things will deteriorate further.

The Bihar assembly elections come as a major political challenge after the unprecedented Lok Sabha elections that veered the direction of Indian politics. Assembly elections were held in five states, Maharashtra, Haryana, Jharkhand, Kashmir and Delhi. But they were clashes between two political thoughts that dominated Indian political scenes for six decades. The electoral battle in Bihar is different in nature and content as the upper castes are seeking to drive out the deprived classes from power corridors that they have been clutching to for two and half continued decades. The Deprived class with the Dalits and the minorities standing by them are seeking to retain their hold. Thus nature of the battle is negative of keeping the other out.