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The political opposition may be desperate to establish businessman Gautam Adani’s link with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, but it is absolutely absurd to expect the Prime Minister to react to such suggestions. Over the years, almost all enterprising and ambitious businessmen managed to establish links with Indian prime ministers. Business houses often had to pay dearly for being on the wrong side of the government. The late JRD Tata had accused the Indira Gandhi government in the 1970s of stalling the growth of the group’s flagship, Tata Steel.

Xi Jinping's absence from the recent Group of 20 summit may have been a deliberate move to prevent India from taking the spotlight. However, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, along with the United States and Europe, managed to find more effective ways to challenge China's influence on the global stage as the G-20 Summit concluded on September 10 in New Delhi.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Joe Biden held a bilateral meeting on Friday (September 8, 2023) on the sidelines of the just-concluded G20 Summit, where both leaders underscored the close ties between India and the United States. They reaffirmed their commitment to the cause and principles of the G20 grouping, expressing confidence that the summit would be able to hammer out resolutions that would advance shared goals. This was the first time that President Biden was visiting India as US President. The last US President to have visited India in February 2020 was Donald Trump.

Being born and brought up when the all time greats of the world of Bengali letters like Rabindranath Tagore and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay were at the height of their creative powers would not have been considered propitious by most aspiring authors. But Sukumar Roy whose 100th death anniversary passed by almost unnoticed this week was not among them.

Drug addiction has become a major curse of our times, a menace which threatens public health and results in the dissolution of human personality, promoting conditions for various forms of human degradation, whose consequences spread to crime, lawlessness and ruination of families. People using drugs are generally associated with violent crime, robbery and burglary and other forms of crimes. Social effects of drug abuses are a higher crime rate, declining health and depression for friends and family. According to latest official information, 82 percent addicts are incurring expenditure between Rs.200 to Rs. 2000 on their daily dose of drugs and the remaining 18 percent spend above Rs.2000 daily.

A bad omen indeed. On the day the entire state machinery of ‘Bharat’ was busy exploiting the G20 event to project Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the “Yugpurush” and “Vishwaguru”, via decorating the national capital with larger than life cut-outs and festoons, even bigger than any of the world leaders participating at the summit, like the US President Joe Biden, the nondescript voters of Ghosi in a single stroke struck an implausible blow through the ballots.

THRUVANANTHAPURAM: Puthuppally by-election has not, sprung any surprises. Congress candidate Chandy Oommen won the by-election, necessitated by the death of his father and former chief minister Oommen Chandy with a big majority.

The jolt the Bharatiya Janata Party sustained in Ghosi assembly seat of Uttar Pradesh is being blamed by sections of the BJP on Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Behan Mayawati, who allegedly told BSP supporters to cast NOTA. But the NOTA numbers on counting day did not support the theory. The BJP was looking for alibies when the Ghosi defeat was the dissatisfaction of the electorate with the Yogi Adityanath government’s policies, the fallout of rising prices and rampant unemployment. Now, realisation is dawning that an understanding should have been reached with the Bahujan Samaj Party just like the one with Karnataka's Janata Dal-S.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has claimed credit on the eve of G20 summit for converting a heads of government meeting into “a people’s festival”. The government did well to popularize the Indian G20 agenda among people across the country and the world, even if this was something done a la Bollywood style. It is, therefore, striking that in the run—up to summit there has been considerable criticism of the Prime Minister’s leadership style in international media.

The victory of the Trinamool Congress candidate Prof. Nirmal Chandra Roy at the Dhupguri assembly constituency by poll in Bengal by defeating the BJP candidate Smt. Tapashi Roy by around 4,000 votes, vindicates TMC supremo Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s claim that the TMC is the main INDIA alliance party in Bengal and TMC will be deciding the seat sharing formula for 2024 Lok Sabha elections as the prime anti-BJP party in the state.