View Articles

The launching of a one-hundred billion dollar New Development Bank at the Sixth BRICS Summit in Brazil on July 15, 2014 is a historic financing initiative among emerging economies, virtually throwing a challenge at the legitimacy of the post-war Bretton Woods Institutions with all their failings of the past.

Why is India so touchy about allowing foreign defence manufacturing giants to set up military hardware production shops in the country? Like many others, Narendra Modi too had been asking this question to himself as well and spoken at public gatherings on the need for strengthening the domestic base of military hardware production even before he aspired to become India’s prime minister. His scientific mind found no logic towards the country’s long-standing distrust for domestic private initiative in manufacturing weapons, battle tanks, missiles, guns, rockets, combat aircraft, submarine, battle ships, electronic surveillance gadgets and security devices while the government went on spending large foreign exchange in procuring those military hardware from foreign private and government-backed companies based outside the country at huge costs, decades after decades. Therefore, the 49 per cent FDI in defence production announced by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley would appear to be a right step in the right direction.

Good beginning but needs to be worked on India’s financial sector is undergoing a transformation currently and Arun Jaitley’s first budget has sought to address some of the issues upfront.

The fact that sectarian sentiments based on caste or region or religion are not as deeply rooted as is common supposed but are really bubbles on the surface of the country’s political life becomes evident every time there is a wave of sort on the eve of an election.

KOLKATA: Once more, political opinion in Bangladesh is sharply polarised on the critical issues governing Indo-Bangla relations in South Asia.

With the anointment of Amit Shah as the national president of BJP, Narendra Modi has consolidated his grip on his party. It is a fact that Modi’s emergence as the top leader of his party was not uncontested. He had to face a lot of opposition and resistance from within his own party to emerge as the Prime Ministerial candidate of NDA. Many people seen supporting him were in fact helping him only to make use of his popularity for electoral gain and they would have ditched him, had NDA and BJP not got the majority in parliament.

Anointment of Amit Shah as the BJP President signals a change in the dynamics within the BJP. With this change, hold of Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the organization is complete. Now he holds sway both over the government and the party and there is no one to challenge his authority. Also, both Shah and Modi need not be as amenable to diktats from Nagpur as the previous party presidents and Prime Ministers have been. This will mean a recalibration of the relationship between the RSS leadership and the party’s.

The federalism that exists in the Indian Union is federalism only in name. The meagre powers that constitutionally exist in the hands of the state government are continually encroached upon by New Delhi, sometimes by issuing directives, framing ‘guidelines’, attaching riders and conditions to different schemes and by transferring subjects from state list to concurrent list. Most shamelessly, this destruction of the democratic principle is done in the name of a threatened security or a fledgling economy.

BHOPAL: Strange things are happening in Madhya Pradesh. In a rare spectacle, accusing fingers are being raised both at the Governor and the Chief Minister. When asked to comment on the charges being levelled against him, Governor Ramnaresh Yadav, in an angry tone, declared that he was prepared to be hanged if the allegations were found to be true. While the Governor announced his readiness to die, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh declared that, “I will take sanyas if a single allegation is proved”.

The Railway Budget 2014-15, presented by the Union Minister of Railways, Sadananda Gowda in the Lok Sabha on July 8, 2014, seeks to link Indian Railways to the market economy, making a course correction in the hitherto continuing treatment of it as a social welfare outreach by the successive Governments of India.