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Certain events symbolize the rottenness of our system exposing the actions of influential ruling leaders and destroying constitutional institutions. One such event is the infamous cash-for-jobs scam in which the court last week sentenced the former chairman of the Punjab Public Service Commission Ravinder Paul Singh Sidhu for seven years and imposed a fine of Rs. one crore. (In 2013, a Ropar court had also convicted Sidhu on corruption charges relating to the “PPSC recruitment scam” and he was sentenced to six years R.I. and a fine of Rs. one lakh).

The belief that the entry of young people into politics is the answer to some of the country’s problems hasn’t been borne out by the performance of chief ministers like Omar Abdullah in Jammu and Kashmir and Madhu Koda in Jharkhand. Now, Maharashtra’s 44-year-old chief minister Devendra Fadnavis has joined the ranks of those who have disappointed their backers.

The recent interim deal with Iran and the western powers has given the country a chance to come out of its economic isolation. Tehran has been facing a series of sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council since 2006 on the basis of IAEA reports relating to its non-compliance with its safeguards agreement under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Further sanctions were imposed by the European Union and the US. But Iran remained adamant maintaining that its uranium enrichment and reprocessing was not for development of arsenals but for peaceful uses. The western powers were skeptic to this assurance.

In a month’s time, Narendra Modi government will complete one year in office. Doubtless, the first eleven months of the BJP government have been eventful, marked by high-profile international diplomacy—the visits to India by US President Barack Obama and China’s Xi Jinping and Modi’s own visit to the US and the G-20 summit-- and his reaching out to SAARC. At home, results of the BJP in states and local bodies elections have been mixed. Expectations from the Modi government have been running high, and, in recent weeks, there have been rumblings of discontent, particularly in business and industry, about whether it has been able to deliver on its promise.

The acrimony over the new land bill, converted from ordinance under Modi government, shadowed the Make in India movement and make it a far distant dream. The politicians, who out cried against the bill as obnoxious and anti-farmer, could successfully de-throne the bill, given the BJP shackled by minority in Rajya Sabha. But, the irony is that the farmers, who hogged the limelight, are sunk into doubts over the ground realties of the benefits of the new bill. The first amended Land Act 2013, which was drafted for the benefit of farmers, has almost crippled their hope when not a single land was procured under the Act. Investors shied way from investment in any big green-field project after facing more hardship to acquire land directly from the farmers under the Act. The growth of infrastructure projects remained at abysmally low.

The coming summit of Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) on July 9 and10 this year at Ufa in Russian Federation has special significance for India as after years of discussions and speculations, India may finally be given full membership at the summit thereby opening the doors to the largest functioning democracy in the world to become an active participant of a regional block which is dominated by China and Russia.

The erstwhile Janata Parivar is getting ready to merge again. In the next few days the Samajwadi Chief Mulayam Singh Yadav is to announce its name and the symbol etc. as the six parties, which are proposing to unite have already sorted the modalities. In fact, this will be their third avatar after the Janata experiment of 1977 and the Janata dal experiment of 1989. Mulayam Singh Yadav, Deve Gowda, Nitish Kumar, Sharad Yadav and Lalu Prasad Yadav had been a part of the Janata Party or the JP movement that preceded it, or both and were also in Janata Dal. Each formed the breakaway parties and achieved some electoral success in their pockets of influence. The question is whether this experiment will succeed and the Janata Parivar will be able to make an impact in the national political scene.

LUCKNOW: CPI national secretary and general secretary of All India Kisan Sabha Atul Anjan has criticized Akhilesh Yadav government for being insensitive towards problems of farmers in the state.

If a group of middle-level leaders of the Congress party (who in the past had found virtue in Rahul Gandhi and projected him as the only leader to lead the Congress, pitching him against his mother, the Congress president, Sonia Gandhi) are to be believed, then Rahul’s charisma had revived the party and enthused the Congressmen in Bihar like never before. Rahul’s model of liberating the organisation through the process of decentralisation and democratisation has had a positive impact on the body languages of the cadres and leaders.

As Sino-Indian rivalry for extending influence in South and South-East Asia hots up, significant changes are taking place in the foreign policy of our neighbouring countries. Sri Lanka and Afghanistan provide a typical example of this.