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Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Sri Lanka this week has raised a lot of expectations not only in Colombo but also in Tamil Nadu. Modi tweeted on Sunday 'I embark on my first visit to Sri Lanka with great joy and confidence that this visit will make India's relations with Sri Lanka even stronger, in the larger interest of our people.'

In a pre-budget appraisal (mid-February) of Indian economy, 'the bright spot in the global landscape', IMF says the recent revival, helped by policy actions improving confidence and lower global oil prices, must be strengthened by revitalising the investment cycle and accelerating structural reforms.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The imminent showdown between the ruling United Democratic Front (UDF) government and the opposition Left Democratic Front (LDF) has ratcheted up tension by several notches.

The Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi wrote to the State Chief Ministers close on the Fourteenth Finance Commission (FFC) principal recommendation of “a record increase of devolution of the divisible pool of resources to States”, optimistically expecting that “every State will come up with a plan for its key priorities and deploy resources” for development objectives. This unexceptionable and salutary hope, following a shift from scheme-cum-grant based support from the Union to a devolution-based support to constituent States of the federation, indubitably signifies “a quantum leap in the process of the country’s development”. This was on February 24, 2015 when the NDA Government gave its nod to the majority of recommendations including by far the biggest transfer of taxable resources from the divisible pool of the FFC headed by the former RBI Governor, Dr. Y.V.K. Reddy.

Is India ultimately getting ready to shed it national party government pretense? Such a development is no longer hypothetical after Congress, the country’s oldest national party, lost heavily in the last Lok Sabha election occupying less than 44 seats in 542-member house. Barring a few states such as Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Goa and Jharkhand, BJP, the lone nationalist party in Lok Sabha having a overwhelming presence, is not in control of other 23 states although its coalition is ruling Maharashtra and Jammu & Kashmir. The latest Delhi assembly election, in which Congress that ruled the national capital-state for 15 years in a row drew a big zero, saw BJP too almost routed in the capital state getting only three seats and leaving the rest 67 with Aam Aadmi Party. The two communist parties, CPM and CPI, having a constant national presence as a political force after Congress and strong trade union presence in the country, also are ceasing to be national parties with CPM having just nine Lok Sabha seats and CPI only one. The rise of regional parties threatens future national party government rule at the Centre. The central government’s role even in the country’s key portfolios such as finance, defence, home affairs or internal security, external affairs, commerce, including the management of railways, telecommunications and natural resources, may increasingly get tinkered by states. Already, Rajya Sabha, represented by states, has taken an upper hand to stop, delay or scuttle the government’s law making power.

It may appear to be an unfortunate coincidence to many that serious dissension should break out in India’s political wunderkind, the Aam Aadmi Party, within a few weeks of its spectacular victory in the Delhi Assembly elections, which stopped the Narendra Modi juggernaut.

JD(U) supremo Nitish Kumar might have succeeded in removing the Mahadalit Jitan Ram Manjhi from the post of the chief minister, but like phoenix within a month of ouster, Manjhi has been resurfacing as the major game changer on the political horizon of Bihar. After Manjhi lost the first bout, political experts had virtually written him off. But on March 9, Manjhi heralded his resurrection by observing a day long hunger strike beneath the statue of Mahatma Gandhi at the Gandhi maidan against Nitish’s decision to scrap 34 decisions by him as the chief minister. Incidentally nearly 27 decisions directly relate to and benefit the rural poor, dalits, mahadalits and class iv government employees.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The sad and untimely death of Kerala Assembly Speaker, G. Karthikeyan, has posed a fresh set of problems for Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and the United Democratic Front Government led by the Congress.

What next in Jammu and Kashmir? The question arises due to the history-making turn state politics has taken with the PDP and the BJP forming coalition government headed by the PDP’s patron Mufti Mohammad Sayeed. Though unthinkable in Indian politics prevailing polarizing environment, the coming together of Mufti’s Muslim majority Kashmir-centric PDP and the Hindu majority Jammu-centric BJP to form the government cannot be described as a negative development. Mufti has described it as coming together of the North and the South poles.

The roots of the Aam Admi Party’s (AAP) travails lie in the circumstances of its formation. Having emerged from Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption movement, it imbibed all the pretentious self-righteousness and unreal utopianism of the campaign along with the Ralegan Siddhi crusader’s disdain for the existing system.