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LUCKNOW: Samajwadi Party national president Mulayam Singh Yadav has realized that it would be very difficult to retain power in 2017 assembly polls.

Has anyone ever seen a debate on an adjournment motion without the Prime Minister? One wonders if there is a rule under which voting is not mandatory on an adjournment motion, amounting to censuring the government. It was witnessed when Lok Sabha took up for discussion an adjournment on the penultimate day of the current monsoon session. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was not seen at all as the debate progressed. The general practice over the years has been that the Prime Minister replies to the debate but, in this debate, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley deputized for him. If the PM, who is the leader of the house, shows such apathy to highest institution of the land, why blame a member who disrupts proceedings or for unbecoming behaviour.

Global financial markets were thrown into an unexpected turmoil over China's sudden devaluation of its Renminbi (RMB) vis-a -vis US dollar on two successive days, August 11 and 12, by around 2 per cent both days, the steepest in two decades, sending new shocks for the world currency system and broader economy as well.

The poll bugle has sounded in Bihar and the players are getting active. The October Assembly polls will be unique in the sense it is a fight between the Prime Minister Narendra Modi and chief minister Nitish Kumar. Normally Assembly polls are fought on local issues and on the charisma of the local leaders but consciously this time it is a clash of personalities and not on issues. Unlike Delhi, when the BJP was shying away from a fight between Kejriwal versus Modi, there is no such hesitance in Bihar. Both camps are trying to sell the ‘Brand Modi’ versus ‘Brand Nitish.’ Prime Minister will also take on his ally the RJD chief Laloo Prasad Yadav. All three are great communicators and have a direct approach to the people with the result the fight will be a clash of titans using all the weapons in their armor.

Safety in Indian Railways becomes a subject of discussion when there is an accident. The review of train accidents of the last 5 years (2009-10 to 2013-14) for which the data is available indicates that a large number of accidents happen because of derailments & at level crossing. It is also clear that more than 80 per cent of the accidents are caused by human failure (railway staff or otherwise). The good sign however is that the number of accidents per million kilometers run and number of casualties per million passengers carried has come down in the last few years.

China has shocked the world by suddenly devaluing its currency –renminbi—in two successive days by nearly two per cent on Tuesday and again by 1.6 per cent on Wednesday. This has set in motion in huge adjustment in financial and commodity markets across the world. This is the biggest yuan loss since 1994.

Yakub Memon was hanged at the early hours 30th July 2015, after being convicted for his role in the 2003 Mumbai bomb attacks that killed hundreds of innocent people. His conviction strongly rested on his ‘confession’ to the police, that used to be admissible under TADA, an infamous black law that was widely denounced for being in violation of basic human rights and protection from false framing. This hanging in Maharashtra was preceded by live-telecast hectic activity in Lutyens’ Delhi. Let's leave aside for now those who were for or against Yakub's hanging. The amount of self-congratulation and nation-congratulation among the 'unaffiliated' must have made the 68-year-old Bharat mata blush. Her eyes must have widened with excitement and moistened with pride as she saw Attorney General and others doing their duty far past the midnight hour. 'Grandmother, what big eyes you have!' cried today’s child who still believes that grandmothers are necessarily loving creatures. We know how that one ends.

When the savvy Union Finance Minister Mr. Arun Jaitley unveiled the gold monetization scheme in the 2015-16 budget many eyebrows were raised as to the practical benefits such a scheme could deliver to its users. This has been mainly due to the abject performance of the former Gold Deposit Scheme 1999 which let individuals/trusts monetize their stock of gold, jewels or gold coins by depositing them with a bank and earning returns in grammage. While reviewing the scheme’s fiasco and tepid outcome, the KUB Rao Committee conceded that there was limited success on account of high melting costs, a high ticket size (a minimum deposit of 500 gm of gold in gross weight) and the predilection of individuals for return of the original jewellery pledged. Without proposing any mechanism to root out the shortcomings, the Committee merely suggested a Modified Gold Deposit scheme where there is to be no restriction on the weight of gold that may be deposited.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: One step forward, two steps backward. That seems to be the result of the efforts made by the BJP in Kerala which seemed to have taken a decisive step towards realization of its long-standing dream of forging a third front in the state a few weeks back.

The monsoon session of Parliament got washed away. And, with it, the prospect of getting such important executive policy moves through Land Bill and GST introduction got further clouded. The BJP-led NDA government is already about 15-month old, spending 25 per cent of its normal tenure before the next Lok Sabha election. If any group is really upset with the poor legislative function of the country, it is the foreign direct investors who banked big on India after BJP acquired the controlling party position in the 2014 Lok Sabha election.