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After a long tug-of-war, India-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement (FTA) in services has become a reality. It symbolizes one more step forward to accelerate India’s Look East policy. India signed FTA in goods in 2009. In fact, from the beginning India has always been insisting on comprehensive FTA for goods and services, in contrary to ASEAN thrust on FTA in goods at the first stage. The advantage for India is more in service trade than in goods. But, since trade in goods is conventionally the first stage of FTA, India had to bow to ASEAN pressure for trade in goods as the precursor to FTA in services.

BHOPAL: The ancient holy city of Ujjain where Lord Krishna, his brother Balram and his lifelong friend Sudama, had their education, has earned the reputation of a city where 'gurus' are subjected to violent attacks by the goons belonging to outfits which are self-appointed custodians of Hinduism. On September 15, about 30 to 40 persons, who, according to the police, belonged to Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal, forcibly entered the chamber of Professor Kaul, the Vice chancellor of the Ujjain University and started manhandling him.

The Modi Government strangely seems to have settled for a somewhat slow motion in re-energising economic growth, belying the expectations of dynamic performance for a stable government which had instilled business confidence. It may well have had some impact in the political backlash within four months for the ruling party, BJP, as reflected in the recent assembly byelections.

The poll season is picking up with four politically important states going to elections in the next couple of months. These are the first major elections, since the 2014 Lok Sabha polls where the BJP-led NDA was voted to power with a thumping majority. It is important for the BJP to maintain its winning streak. But the recent by-election results in different states including Bihar, Uttarakhand. UP, Rajasthan, Bihar and Gujarat have come as a jolt for the party. It was routed in U.P and Rajasthan and ceded ground in Bihar and Modi’s home state Gujarat. The only consolation for the party was opening its account in the West Bengal Assembly.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: A unique feature of the functioning of the Communist parties, the Communist Party of India (CPI) and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI-M) in particular, is their readiness to admit lapses, punish the errant leaders and apply the correctives. The CPI has done it on a number of occasions; so has the CPI(M).

Astrologers are unlikely to dismiss as a coincidence the fact that ill-fortune is currently dogging the two relatively young members of the Nehru-Gandhi family, albeit from different lines of descent, viz. Rahul and Varun.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi seems to be out to wash the sins of three former prime ministers – BJP’s Atal Behari Vajpayee, Congress satraps Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh. Modi’s avowed policy to protect the strategic public sector assets from falling into the jaws of private corporate sharks, modernize and rebuild curable sick companies, make their idle immovable assets productive and turn them globally competitive, runs counter to the policies of all the three previous prime ministers.

LUCKNOW: Bharatiya Janata Party got a rude shock in Uttar Pradesh as it could win only three seats out of the eleven assembly seats which went to the polls while the ruling Samajwadi Party won eight seats. The SP also won comfortably the Mainpuri Lok Sabha seat.

The goras or firingis who ruled over large parts of the subcontinent for centuries often appear to browns as an undifferentiated mass. That there are different shades of goras too should have been apparent from Ireland, long a part of the ‘United’ Kingdom and yearning equally long to be free from being ruled from London. The Irish proclaimed a Republic in 1916, carried on an armed struggle against the London government from 1919 to 1921 that ended with the British government forced to sign a treaty leading to the formation of the Irish Free State. A new constitution was put to a public referendum and was ratified by the people. Those Irish who were London loyalists managed to secede from the Irish Free State and continue to remain a part of the United Kingdom as Northern Ireland.

A paper, published in the world’s topmost scientific journal, Nature, on 11 September, drives home a strong case for revision of emission pattern of greenhouse gases (GHG). It is the finding of an internationally collaborative project of 15 scientists, led by an Indian atmospheric physicist, Dr Prabir Patra, Senior Scientist, Department of Environmental Geochemical Cycle Research, Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC), Yokohama. The title of the paper is Observational evidence for inter-hemispheric hydroxyl parity, while Nature editorial desk, assigning due importance to the conclusions in the paper, introduced it as, ’No equatorial divide for a cleansing radical.’