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The BJP high command has taken the right but difficult decision to sack Karnataka chief minister B.S. Yeddyurappa but will he go quietly? He had survived several crises earlier but this time he had no such luck. Now that the BJP Parliamentary Board has decided to show him the door it is clear that the BJP bosses have felt “enough is enough “What is important is that even if he is innocent, politics is perception and in the eye of the public the chief minister is corrupt. In these three years the chief minister did nothing to correct his image with the result today, no tears are shed for his ouster.

KOLKATA: A leopard, the saying goes, cannot change its spots : she may be two months in power, but new West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee cannot abandon her crowd pleasing ways.

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh is set to give a big push to the second phase of reforms in the monsoon session of Parliament beginning August 1 to prove the point that there is no paralysis in the functioning of the Government under his leadership and the steam is not off from the course of liberalization. He also wants to show that he is firmly in control as the head of the UPA2 regime.

Persevering with its anti-inflationary monetary stance, the RBI announced on July 26 a stronger-than-expected 50 basis point increase in the key policy lending rate, Repo, from 7.5 to 8 per cent with immediate effect. The reverse repo is automatically adjusted to 7 per cent and the Marginal Standing Facility (MSF), which is held at 100 basis points above repo rate, is recalibrated at 9 per cent.

New Delhi: With 11 consecutive interest rate increases in the last 15 months, RBI has emerged as the most aggressive Central Bank which is tasked with containing inflation. At a time, when all available date indicate a clear slowdown in Industrial and economic output, this is a matter of great concern since there could be a tipping point beyond which salvaging a downward spiral of growth could be an arduous task. In this situation, a more than expected increase in repo rate would also hurt sentiments, said Mr Chandrajit Banerjee, Director General of Confederation of Indian Industry.

Global foreign direct investment flows had risen modestly to 1.24 trillion dollars in 2010, but still 37 per cent below the 2007 peak of 1.97 trillion, reflecting slow-paced post-crisis recovery in global industrial output despite some rebound in trade, according to UNCTAD’s World Investment Report (WDR-2011). However, the emerging trends underline the significant shift in international production, and more recently the weight of global consumption, towards emerging and transition economies, which absorbed half of the world FDI flows for the first time.

What began as a limited crisis in one publication of the Rupert Murdoch media group in Britain, the now-closed News of the World, has grown into a tempest which threatens the world’s greatest media empire and could politically singe Prime Minister David Cameron. The 10 arrests made so far—including that of News International CEO Rebekah Brooks, and Les Hinton, who headed Dow Jones, the business information agency which also runs The Wall Street Journal—and the resignation of the London Metropolitan police commissioner, have thrown British society into turmoil.

B.S. Yeddyurappa is God’s gift to the BJP’s opponents. While the party has other controversial chief ministers, such as Narendra Modi, as well as those who face corruption charges, as in Uttarakhand, none of them can match either the scale of the Karnataka chief minister’s malfeasance or his brazen insouciance in the face of allegations.

Will the sharp dip in the US-Pakistan relations impact the situation in Jammu and Kashmir? The question gains importance as it is Kashmir and terrorism which have contributed to the deep slide in their relations. For an answer one has to have a closer look at the factors responsible for their deteriorated ties.

BHOPAL: The monsoon session of the Madhya Pradesh Vidhan Sabha that commenced on July 11 ended on July 22. In between, no sittings were held on three days due to holidays.