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All political lives, unless they are cut off in mid-stream at a happy juncture, end in failure, said the British Conservative Party leader, Enoch Powell. Manmohan Singh appears to be heading in this dismal direction although a caveat may be entered to ask whether he can be regarded as a true-blue politician at all. Essentially an academic, who reportedly impressed other presidents and prime ministers by speaking without notes on economic affairs, he was, as he admitted, an accidental prime minister.

Twenty weeks are too short a period to pass any judgement on the performance of a new government. But the period is enough for analysing emerging trends and quality of governance. The reference is to the functioning of Virbhadra Singh-led Congress government, which had taken over the reins of Himachal Pradesh on December 25, 2012.

BHOPAL: Several eyebrows were raised when the birthday of Uma Bharati was celebrated in a big way in Bhopal on May 4. In the course of the daylong celebration, she gave a clear impression that she had no intention of keeping away from Madhya Pradesh and its politics.

Surat : Lambasting Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s tall claims of development, a noted Muslim cleric brought to focus that the minority community in the state were lagging behind in the development process and were unable to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

Development is the catchphrase of modern times. No word has gained so much political currency as development in the last few decades. The popular media in India is abuzz with many kinds of development talk today. We constantly hear about Modi style of development with the tagline ‘maximum governance with minimum government,’ or Sonia-Rahul Gandhi style of development, which is said to be a welfare state model, or even the Nitish Kumar style of development, which some claim is an inclusive one. Media often relishes in pitching one kind of development against another as if no other form exists for the people of India.

The election results in Karnataka have demonstrated a definite trend — the days of hung house and unprincipled coalitions in the states, unlike in the Centre, are over. One may say that electorates in states show more maturity than when they vote in Lok Sabha election. In 2004, assembly and Lok Sabha elections were simultaneously held in Karnataka; the same voter, at the same instant, voted differently.

School textbooks are interesting things and the vision of the world they impart upon you can involve years of unlearning – in most instances, complete delearning is not possible at all. It is from such school textbooks we get our ideas of history – at least that is wherefrom I got mine. In that framing of the past via history, kings and their stories of building and losing kingdoms have centrestage.

Soon after the change of guard in Bengal, the maverick Mamata Banerjee had warned the Left Front to keep quiet for at least ten years. The beleaguered Left had also decided not to criticise the new regime for at least a year or so fearing people would not tolerate as they would prefer to allow sufficient time to the new government to deliver. But things started changing slowly as the new Trinamool Congress government’s various actions invited criticism and forced the Leftists to spring back to the streets.

With hindsight, it was a right diplomatic decision on the part of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to postpone his scheduled tour of Japan six months ago in view of political uncertainty and brewing national election there. India had rightly guessed the possibility of a regime change in Japan. And, it must be to the delight of Dr. Singh that his old friend Shinzo Abe, leading the conservative, pro-big business Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), has once again become Japan’s Prime Minister, after a gap of nearly six years.

The recent tragedy, involving collapse of a market building, killing more than seven hundred people and injuring several hundred others with many still missing, in Savar, Bangladesh is particularly heartbreaking because of the fact that unlike the previous cases, this time around the source of the safety concern was identified in time and the previous day of the catastrophe a step was taken to close the market until a detailed safety check and repair were undertaken.