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The human body is 80 percent water. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s is 80 percent hubris, the remaining 20 percent hot air for ballast, also called ‘bombast’! Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s charisma and qualities to inspire are garnished with enough narcissism to sink INS Vikrant! And his breadth of vision matched only by the tall talk he indulges in and was given his social media nickname for.

Gautam Adani’s calling Hindenburg’s allegations of fraud against him an attack on the Indian nation is a matter of particular significance. Just before this episode, the BBC documentary on Modi had been labelled a product of the colonial mindset by the government and hence also construed to be an attack on the Indian nation. Adani would not have dared to equate himself with the nation, exactly the way Modi had done, unless he was certain that Modi would concur with such equating. Both Modi and Adani in short see the irrespective selves, and each other, as the embodiments of the nation. The Modi-Adani alliance which is the core of the Corporate-Hindutva alliance, is the nation in their perception. The fortune of the nation, it follows, requires Modi to remain politically supreme and Adani to flourish in the economic realm. The nation cannot afford otherwise!

New Delhi: Golf buffs are in for a treat as after a three-year hiatus, a revamped Hero Indian Open, with a power packed field and US$ 2 million as prize purse will be played between February 23-26, at the DLF Golf & Country Club, Gurugram.

Kolkata: Displaying remarkable consistency for the third successive day, Delhi’s Sachin Baisoya regained sole top position as he got into a two-shot lead with a five-under 65 penultimate fround card of the Rs. 1 crore TATA Steel PGTI Players Championship at the Tollygunge golf Club, here on Thursday.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has announced that the retail e-rupee has accomplished the first milestone set for it – 50,000 users. Launched on December 1, 2022, the e-rupee is India’s Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) pilot which was launched within a closed group of banks and merchants in four select cities. The first phase of the pilot was intended to onboard 50,000 users and 5,000 merchants, which it accomplished early this month, RBI’s Deputy Governor Rabi Sankar said at a press conference on February 8. It seems the e-rupee pilot is not onboarding new users at the moment and is preparing for the next round of its pilot in which e-rupee will be available in more cities and banks. At that stage, it will once again start onboarding new users.

It speaks a lot that human beings are by their very nature courageous. True, but also true is the fact that human beings are foolhardy and brave. Like, how many of us continue to wear the mask, which in the heyday of Covid-19 kept the novel coronavirus bottled up, in a manner of speaking, and saved tens of thousands of vulnerable human beings?

The union budget for 2023-24 has unveiled a big assault on lives and livelihoods of the people. Spending on schemes and programmes that provide direct economic benefit to people has been slashed across the board. But even bigger and more alarming are the sins of omission. Key problems confronting the people have been either ignored or cavalierly dealt with. These include raging unemployment, especially among youth, that has criminally frittered away the much-vaunted demographic dividend.

The result of the election for Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) held on December 4, was declared on December 7, 2022. Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) had won 134 seats in a house of 250. The BJP that had been ruling the MCD for the last 15 years could win 104 seats while INC could win 9 seats. However, the defeat was not acceptable to the BJP, which is manifested in the stalling of the mayoral elections thrice, now labelled in the Supreme Court of India as ‘destruction of democracy’.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has blocked the demand raised by the Opposition in the Parliament for an enquiry to be monitored by the Supreme Court or to set up Joint Parliamentary Committee to investigate the Adani group’s manipulations of the stock market and fraud and into the allegations levelled against the industrialist Gautam Adani himself and his company by Hindenburg Research. The step reconfirms the Centre’s patronage for the Adani group. Adani’s own response to Hindenburg’s allegations which runs in 413 pages is a blatant attempt to deflect the serious charges of fraud against the group. The company called the allegations “calculated attack on India, its independence, integrity, and quality of Indian institutions, and also the growth story and ambition of India.”

While the 140 crores Indians, even those spread across the world, were impatiently awaiting a resilient rebuttal from their prime minister Narendra Modi to the allegations levelled by the Congress leader Rahul Gandhi against him of patronising and promoting corporate giant Gautam Adani, who allegedly indulged in financial irregularities and fraud, Modi, famous for his theatrics, was busy enacting the great comedy show, unfortunately that too on the floor of the Lok Sabha.