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BHOPAL: “Baat niklegi to phir door talak jayegi”. This line from a Ghazal sung by the famous singer, Late Jagjit Singh is on the lips of many a person, who are keeping an eye on the implications of the arrest of Laxmikant Sharma, who was a very important and powerful member of the Shivraj Singh Chauhan, on June 15 on the charge of recommending the appointment of many persons to various posts through exams conducted by the Professional Examination Board (Vyapam), an agency under him. Sharma was an important member of the Shivraj Singh Chauhan cabinet till December 2014, when he lost the Vidhan Sabha elections from his home constituency Sironj in the neighbouring Vidisha district.

WASHINGTON: Indian community in US, including NRIs and students, is upset over the increase in crime against women in India in general and Uttar Pradesh in particular.

The ‘Modi speak’ on tough decisions in the next couple of years to nurse ailing economy has sparked off speculations about what measures he might take.

The weathermen have predicted poor rainfall in the country during the four-month monsoon season. This has caused panic. Actually the worry is not so much for the foodstock which is in comfortable position in the current year, but for the rising trend in prices of essential commodities, particularly food items that pinches the pocket of the common man.

By choosing Japan for his first major diplomatic port of call outside India’s neighbourhood, Narendra Modi has only confirmed what his critics and admirers have by now settled for that he is not only the most unconventional but also most pragmatic of all Indian prime ministers in thoughts and actions, so far. Last week, the prime minister first stepped out of the country to meet India’s most trusted and friendly neighbour, Bhutan, a land-locked historically royal state turned the youngest republic in the region, at its premises to throw open the country’s economy and agriculture for the benefit of the people of Bhutan, help develop Bhutan’s natural resources, including energy, and buy back the surplus for the economic benefit of both the neighbours. Bhutan is India’s only border state that had consciously stayed away from Chinese any major assistance for economic development until now.

Led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the BJP’s political tactics in West Bengal have left Trinamool Congress (TMC) supremo Mamata Banerjee pretty much clueless, and her party sharply divided, in working out an effective response.

The notion that advanced economies are on a steady course of recovery and growth, has taken a sudden knock with incipient risks, especially for the already struggling emerging economies like India. EMEs' role as principal growth driver had recently diminished somewhat in juxtaposition to the relatively more robust recovery and growth in USA and in a few other advanced economies other than the euro-zone.

Like the proverbial Bourbons, the Congress learns nothing and forgets nothing. For the party, the latest electoral drubbing does not seem to have been too bothersome. It had promised “deep introspection” after it lost four assembly elections last year. That it did nothing of the sort was evident only a few months later in the second thrashing which it received at the electorate’s hands.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s address to party cadres Saturday was a timely lament that Indian media fails yet again to address the need to report on what the new government has started to do about skills and entrepreneurship education.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has done well to tell the people in advance that this is no time for 'goodies' but for 'tough decisions', which should mean some hardships somewhere, and that is realism creeping in when you get down to governance away from pulpit protestations.