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KOLKATA: Apparently economic stagnation breeds political opportunism in the context of West Bengal.

Defence is a critical and vital area that the country needs to address with a clear defined policy and a sense of urgency. Modernisation of Armed Forces is the utmost need of the hour to face the contemporary challenges. This can be speeded up through public-private partnership in areas where it is necessary.

Prime Minister Modi is embarking on a pragmatic and proactive neighbourhood policy for the past two months but will it work according to expectations? Perhaps it is too early to talk of the results, as it is not just the policy but also its implementation, which is the key. As of now the ministry of external affairs is going full steam to cultivate the neighbors with the Foreign minister Sushma Swaraj personally making contacts to assure them of the new government’s intentions. Modi himself has already visited Bhutan, his first after taking over as PM and is expected to visit Nepal next week.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The politics within the Congress in Kerala is set to hit a new low with Chief Minister Oommen Chandy openly demanding a reshuffle of the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee!

US Secretary of State John Kerry visiting India in the first 100 days of the Narendra Modi Government with a historic mandate for change and reform, expects his call on the Prime Minister and meetings with Indian leaders would help build a “transformative partnership” between the two largest democracies in tackling global economic challenges and security in Asia-Pacific region. There would be added momentum for a historic partnership when President Obama welcomes Prime Minister Modi in Washington later this year.

Legendary Apeejay’s Jit Paul, who lorded over Kolkata’s food-fun-n-frolic hub Park Street, once told his friend, West Bengal’s iconic Marxist chief minister Jyoti Basu, that the CPM leader should shed the leftist concept of job creation if he really wanted to create large number of jobs for the state’s unemployed youth. Witty Paul advised Basu to shift his government’s focus on creation of thousands, if not lakhs of employers. The latter would automatically recruit employees in various skills. The period was the early1980s. Bengal was saddled with an unprecedented industrial exodus and sickness mostly due to the Congress government’s freight equalization policy on coal and steel that robbed Eastern India of its natural advantage of the proximity to those vital raw materials, which once made the region the country’s hub of heavy industry, steel and iron making, ordnance factories, electricity generation, shipbuilding, railway wagon manufacturing and engineering outfits, also partly with labour unrest rooted in falling financial and business fortunes of other industries due to dwindling demand for their products and high cost of other raw materials such as petro-chemicals and cotton that came from Western India carrying high freight cost.

The Union Ministry of Home Affairs has laid down a well-knit system of security for VVIPs and VIPs and individual public figures to be followed by the States and Union Territories. Accordingly, the responsibility for providing security to an individual rests primarily with the State Governments and Union Territory Administrations in terms of Schedule V11 of the Constitution of India under which Police and Public Order come under them. Security of an individual comes under the jurisdiction of the State or Union Territory in which such individual resides ordinarily or happens to be residing.

Mr. Deng Xiaoping’s leadership in China is juxtaposed by two legendaries. He was one of the greatest revolutionary in the long march to set up a proletarian society and conversely, at same time, was a great reformer of the Chinese economy. He portrayed himself as Marxist- Leninist as a man of revolution. But, as a reformer, he opposed Mao’s egalitarianism and upstaged economic reforms with foreign capital.

Providence has again demonstrated its habit of springing surprises. After months of electoral drought, the Congress experienced a slight drizzle as it won all the three seats in the recent Uttarakhand by-elections.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: If the Congress-led former United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Government was a disaster for the Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs), the Narendra Modi-headed National Democratic Alliance (NDA) is turning out to be a calamity.