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“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop. Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising every time we fall.”

The certificate given by the RSS to the Narendra Modi government that it is moving in the “right direction” has come in the nick of time for the BJP.

After the ritual row over Lord Jagannath's Nabakalebara including the Brahma Paribartan fiasco and matter relating to the alleged involvement of the ruling party leaders with the fake godman Sarathi Baba, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik's sleepless nights are not over. The state is faced with a breakdown in the law and order and security situation.

Why change only the name of Aurangzeb Road in New Delhi? Why not change the name of Tughlaq Road? Mohammed bin Tughaq too was a tyrant like Aurangzeb. Remember how the Tughalqi farmans were feared. Akbar too was a Muslim. Why must a road exist after his name? History cannot be changed by renaming roads after Muslim rulers. The BJP has picked on Mughal emperor Aurangzeb to rewrite New Delhi’s history by renaming a road after him. Newspaper reports revealed that the name of Aurangzeb road has been changed to APJ Abdul Kalam Marg and the signboards too was repainted. The change in name does not mean anything; not it is going to change history. The least that can be said is the move is shortsighted.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: A week is a long time in politics. Ask Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam (SNDP) general secretary, Vellappally Natesan. He would nod in vigorous agreement, albeit a bit ruefully.

With West Bengal Assembly polls now only months away, political alignments between the ruling Trinamool Congress(TMC) and other parties are shifting fast.

Hindi in Devanagari script is the official language of the Indian Union government and some state governments. Hindi derives its primacy from numbers. According to the 2001 census, 41.03 per cent of the population was Hindi speakers. However, the census definition of Hindi is extremely wide and people are counted as Hindi speakers even if they don’t call their language “Hindi”. Census Hindi includes Western Hindi (but not Urdu), Eastern Hindi, non-Maithili Bihari languages (including Bhojpuri), Pahari languages and Rajasthani languages – even if the speakers did not report their language as “Hindi”. These numbers don’t do justice to the real diversity of the languages that are counted as “Hindi”. I have often experienced this first-hand. Let me recount an example.

Finance Ministers and central bankers from G-20 nations meet in Ankara (Sep.4 & 5) against the background of weakening global growth prospects due to rising volatility in financial markets, as amplified recently when China's stock prices tumbled, followed by currency devaluation. But the question is whether any effective joint actions by advanced and emerging economies would emerge from these deliberations at a critical moment in the post-crisis era.

It was a scheduled high profile visit to the United States that never happened for the late Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri soon after the Tashkent summit. Although it was planned twice within his brief tenure, it was not destined to be. The first was planned for June 1965 one year after Shastri took over as Prime Minister but the US President Lyndon Johnson postponed it to the disappointment of Shastri. The second time was planned for January 31 to February 5, 1966. Had Shastri lived, he would have made his first visit to the US as a triumphant leader after the Tashkent summit after signing the agreement on January 10, 1966 between him and Pakistan President Ayub Khan.

LONDON: European Union has been facing the worst refugee crisis since the Second World War. The situation has deteriorated to such an extent that while the German chancellor Angela Markel has cautioned that the European Union could be forced to bring back border controls, the demographic character of Britain will undergo a major change with the population likely to soar by 21 million due to rise in migrant influx.