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By mid-year, India realises its economy is grossly under-performing, well below the expectations raised in the Union Budget for fiscal 2016, though the continuing fall in global oil and commodity prices has been a boon to beef up its finances and enable fiscal deficit being possibly contained within target (3.9 per cent of GDP).

Critics of Prime Minister Narendra Modi may dub him as a good show man and playing to the gallery but even sceptics cannot deny the fact he has sold Indian economy well at Silicon Valley, luring non-resident Indians to invest, who form one third of those employed in Information Technology companies there. India has now become the most favourite destination for foreign direct investment now. In China, nonresident Chinese played a significant role in the flow of foreign direct investment. China attracted up to $120 billion annually in certain years and the Asian giant has been attracting huge FDI every year for the last three decades. This year in 2015 India has become number one FDI destination overtaking China and United States by attracting $31 billion in greenfield projects alone in the first six months of calender 2015.

The latent fissures between communities explode and lead to loss of life when the attendant institutions meant for ensuring harmony fail to act. Institutions work efficiently in a well functioning state where law and order is generally maintained as per law and in an orderly manner. This also demands an efficient judiciary, which will inflict exemplary punishment in the shortest possible time to the guilty. Needless it to mention we also need other stakeholders and influencers who will fall in line with what the civilized code demands and not argue incessantly when the institutions take a decision.

LUCKNOW: The Dadri incident, where a Muslim man Mohammad Akhlaq was killed on the suspicion that he was eating cow meat, is the precursor to Mission 2017 Assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh, just as Muzaffarnagar riots were engineered for 2014 Lok Sabha polls.

The Union Government in the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (I&B) has taken up formulation of a comprehensive policy and institutional mechanism to address the menace of paid news syndrome that has engulfed the Indian media world both print and electronic. In this connection, as ascertained officially, the Ministry of I&B has submitted a note to the Ministry of Law and Justice for amendment of the Representation of the People Act, 1951, to make paid news a punishable electoral malpractices and the Press Council of India (PCI) Act, 1978, to empower the PCI to adjudicate the complaints of paid news and give final judgement in the matter. The Ministry of I&B is also working to amend the Press and Registration of Book and Publications Act to check the incidents of paid news. In other words, the Press and Registration of Book and Publications Bill will include a provision to curb paid news.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP) is in the seventh heaven over its ‘success’ in forging an alliance with the Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam (SNDP), the powerful organization of Ezhavas, clinched at a meeting SNDP general secretary Vellappally Natesan had with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president, Amit Shah the other day.

It’s getting on to be four months that the film and television institute in Pune hasn’t been able to function. The reason is that the students do not want an RSS nominee as their chairman. The latter, Gajendra Chauhan, is also a “B” grade actor with no other claim to fame than playing the melodramatic role of Yudhishthir in the soap-opera-style television serial, Mahabharata.

Many high-profile diplomatic affairs editors and correspondents were simply stupefied when the Kolkata-based Telegraph broke the story in the first week of September that India’s National Security Adviser Ajit Doval surreptitiously visited Israel and Iran in a short while back there before apparently to know where the grand mean between two inimical countries, Israel and Iran was. This was necessary for the Prime Minister Narendra Modi who is readying himself for a visit to both the countries in succession, hopefully by the end of this year. Never did any Indian Prime Minister visit Israel although as the Chief Minister of Gujarat Modi made a trip to Israel. So for him, the experience of touching down the tarmac of the Ben Gurion Airport, the largest international airport of Israel.

The RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat might have given him the clean chit and endorsed the success, the real rating of the popularity and capability of Prime Minister Narendra Modi will take place in Bihar, the political laboratory of India. In hindsight the election would decipher and lay bare the RSS’s strategy to experiment with implementing its Hindutva philosophy.

Though it looks surprising but in a caste-ridden state like Bihar, economic development has come to the fore in the ongoing poll campaign and caste equations have been pushed to the background. Undoubtedly, the economic development has emerged as the most important issue in the coming Bihar election. What kind of economic development should this be? Firstly, it must go beyond generalized promises and tackle concretely identified subjects, such as health, education, youth and employment, safety of women, potable water, electricity and roads.