View Articles

I was a bit surprised as I didn’t expect it to happen in America. Its snowing lightly and we were stopped at traffic red light on Cambridge street, Burlington, MA. A middle aged woman, probably his panic, came out of nowhere near the window of our car and displayed a placard-”help the poor lady with a dime, please.”Burlington is a small town near Boston city. Later I found out from my personal experience while travelling through cities and towns in USA that asking for alms, in varied forms, is not an uncommon sight in America.

With the BJP unable to exploit the Modi magic and having failed to impact the people of West Bengal, now it is the turn of the government agencies, especially the CBI to lampoon and humiliate Trinamool and its chief Mamata Banerjee. The CBI which has already been investigating into Saradha scam and has arrested some prominent faces of the Trinamool, has of late resorted to the political exercise of maligning and coercing Mamata Banerjee and her government. At least two important issues have come to the public notice. The first is CBI issuing notice to the TMC general secretary Subrata Bakshi seeking details of the party's income and expenditure since 2010 to 2014. Interestingly, the notice has tried to encompass the entire gamut of Trinamool's income sources, including the profit from sale of chief minister Mamata Banerjee's paintings. Nevertheless on its part the CBI does not find any fault with its machination and even refuse to attribute it a 'political move'.

NEW DELHI : Of the six exciting MoUs signed between India and Germany at Hannover Messe, the one on the Indian Engineering Export Promotion Council (EEPC) with German Association for Small and Medium-sized Businesses (BVMW) is perhaps the most promising.

Will the Modi government release the classified Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose documents and put an end to the debate that is going on? It is indeed good news that Prime Minister Modi has assured Netaji’s family that he will personally examine the case for the declassification of the secret Netaji files. The PM's assurance in Berlin this week has given new hope to those who have pushed for a declassification of Bose documents. It is also good news for others who have been demanding easy access to the declassified documents.

NEW DELHI: The Rockefeller Foundation launched today in India a programme to provide ‘smart power’ for rural development – a first of its kind by the US organization anywhere in the world. India has the world’s largest ‘un-electrified’ population, estimated at over 300 million. The program, spearheaded by a non-profit organization called Smart Power India, aims to bring electricity to 1,000 villages over the next three years to provide electricity to some one million people in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.

Keeping in line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s commitment to carry forward his clean India campaign Swachh Bharat, the 2015-16 budget has stepped up allocation for this noble idea. But finance minister Arun Jaitley seems to have forgotten one important area in this regard while presenting his budget – that is measures to improving air quality in Indian cities, which is becoming worse with growing urbanization. Swatch Bharat campaign serves no purpose if measures to tackle poor air quality in cities does not become a major component of this clean India effort.

Alliances and mergers have been the favourite pastime jobs of the politicians. But the merger of the components and groups of the erstwhile Janata Party and floating a new unified Janata Party is different proposition in the prevailing context and situation.

Media, the fourth estate, in our system of rule of law based democratic governance, has almost vanished with its inability to function as a watchdog of the functioning of the government, institutions and businesses through free and fair reporting. Following globalization of Indian economy, vested interests in politics and businesses have captured the media houses to safeguard their interests. They dictate reporting and editorials so much so that media have lost its sheen. It’s like any business. There is no dividing line between management and editorial. It is also true that only media professionals can clean such distortions before the rot engulfs the nation entirely.

After 18 months of gruelling negotiations and several missed deadlines, Iran and the P-5+1 (the United States, France, Britain, China, Russia—and Germany) reached a framework agreement on Iran’s nuclear programme at Lausanne in Switzerland, which is a potential game-changer in the West Asia-North Africa region. The framework deal, to be fleshed out by June 30, has huge geopolitical significance and implications for the world, including India. It must be heartily welcomed.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: A week is a long time in politics. That is the general saying. But ask former Government Chief Whip and Kerala Congress(M) vice-chairman, P. C. George, he will agree that even a day is enough to change political fortunes drastically!