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People of Bengal are yet to lose their heart and hope but undeniably are in a state of shock as to why their chief minister Mamata Banerjee has allowed the things to drift. Whether it is the deteriorating law and order or the suicides of the potato growers or restoring the sanctity of the educational institutions, the Trinamool Congress Supremo has been found to be suffering with the malaise of trust deficit. She does not act as she has no faith in the channel of independent information. It is classic paradox that Mamata is not willing to subscribe to the information on suicides by potato growers.

In 2015, the toughest challenge for Sonia Gandhi is to hold her party together and she has begun acting firmly towards that direction. She may not be Indira Gandhi but she has inherited some of the qualities of her late mother-in-law. In August 1977, less than six months after Indira Gandhi and her party were routed in the anti-Emergency backlash, she mounted an elephant and waded through waist-deep water to reach Belchi, a Dalit village in Bihar, where dalits were mercilessly butchered. This small step changed the course of history. In 2015, Sonia Gandhi, demonstrating almost similar grit, took up the Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act and farmers’ issues. In due course, she will take up other economic and social issues. Let us see if the history repeats itself.

Typically, swear words tell us more about those who speak them than those towards whom they are directed at. Swearing is most effective when the target understands it. Unless the abuser and the target share a common conception, they fall flat – just like the four-letter words that brown cosmo-yuppies shoot at lesser brown folk. To perturb someone by the dig is of essence. When certain kinds of Hindus (especially those with a portable religion that is non-localized and increasingly textual) conceptualize subcontinental homegrown Muslims, at some level they want to believe that these Muslims are wayward Hindus. This “ex-Hindu” conception is something that also has some currency among the brown Muslims themselves. In this, they share a conceptual commonality. Unless a conceptual commonality is shared, the digs, the marking out of differences, don't work. Without a conception of the status of cows not simply as holy or meat but as a point of shared friction, beef bans fails. Beef ban is not so much aimed at protection of bovine species but to remind certain citizens of the Indian Union a simple thing – who's the boss.

At a time when India’s external vulnerabilities to global headwinds remain none too encouraging, the Narendra Modi Government has unveiled its five-year Foreign Trade Policy (FTP) from April 1, 2015 with a lofty goal to push the country’s exports of goods and services from $ 465.9 billion in 2013-14 to roughly $ 900 billion by 2019-20. Wisely, the government has not factored in the patchy performance of 2014-15, the fiscal year just past, because against the merchandise export target of $ 340 billion, exports during the eleven months till February 2015 fetched $ 286 billion, leaving the attainment of target in a single month anywhere even half the $54 billion.

Where is the Aam Aadmi Party heading now that the fight is in the open for all to see? While the Delhi chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal might emerge the winner with the majority choosing to remain with him mainly because the AAP is in power, it is clear that all is not well in the young party. Kejriwal has certainly lost the halo around him now and has emerged as a leader who is not able to quell the dissatisfaction within the party or keep the flock together. The opposition parties including the BJP and the Congress are watching the “tamasha” with glee. After all he sought votes on the slogan “paanch saal Kejrwial.” He is unable to sustain even for five months.

The Narendra Modi Government has entered the new fiscal year (2015-16) with a relatively poor economic outturn in its first ten months of trumpeted governance, which makes the desired growth rebound even more challenging, in the midst of domestic, global and geo-strategic uncertainties.

NEW DELHI: The zero-fuel aeroplane Solar Impulse-2 is perhaps the brightest example as to how solar power can best be harnessed for societal welfare. This is only applied quality science, which Indian entrepreneurs and policy makers have long forgotten, rather selfishly.

KOLKATA: With only days left for the first round of civic polls, it is natural that the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) and the BJP should be hit hard by unruly dissidence. The scramble to secure nominations in these two parties has been fierce in 2015.

Allotment of captive coal mines to the public and private sector producers of power, coal and cement is good news, but the coal and lignite industry will remain overwhelmingly under the control of India’s established public sector producers benchmarking the mining practices, technology use, output, quality and prices. The captive coal mines being auctioned to industry will add value to their owners if they can match or improve upon the ratios fixed by the public sector manufacturers. Suffice it to say that the growth requirement of India’s eight core sector industries in the next 10 years put the highest pressure on coal production. Coal directly feeds at least four core activities – electricity generation and production of steel, cement and fertiliser. The government’s select captive privatization of the coal sector may ease the supply of coal to some extent, but industry will still very largely depend on public sector miners of coal and lignite.

LUCKNOW: Political parties and Muslim organizations are mounting pressure on Akhilesh Yadav government to file appeal in high court against CBI court verdict on Hasimpura incidents. The silence of Samajwadi Party president Mulayam Singh Yadav and his chief minister son Akhilesh Yadav on Hasimpura verdict has baffled Muslim organizations.