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Dhaka: Neha, Anita Kumari, and Lynda Kom, netted three goals each as India thrashed Bhutan 12-0 in their opening match of the SAFF U-20 Women’s football Championship here on Friday.

Over the weekend, a militaristic power that’s spent a long time saber-rattling against and meddling in its neighbour’s affairs violated its territorial integrity and bombed the country. No, not Russia. In this case, I’m referring to Israel’s Sunday drone strike on Iran.

The Union Budget for 2023-24 is the first budget of what Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government describes as Amrit Kaal, the period between the 75th and 100th anniversary of India’s independence when the country will take rapid strides to modernize itself. A major component of this transformation is strengthening the concept of Digital India, which is targeted at achieving ease of doing business and ease of living.

The budget 2023-24 presented to Parliament by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on February 1 has done some good in ensuring that Indian economy remained stable with macro-economic fundamentals continuing to be strengthened but it failed to bring about out of the box reforms to push the economy to a higher growth path in a difficult global environment.

Union Budget 2023-24 is deceptive. The very presumptions of revenue and growth are overestimated, promises made are too high to be realized, allocations made are inequitable for different sectors as well as social groups, and the higher allocations made for certain sectors are being energetically overplayed.

Calling it “The Curious Case of ED Under Modi” will give the Bharatiya Janata Party a hole to duck into. There is nothing “curious” about the Modi government using the Enforcement Directorate to target non-BJP state governments and circle the wagons to protect the interests of the Bharatiya Janata Party. It is part of the Modi Government's by-hook-or-crook expansionist agenda.

The most outstanding feature of the Indian economy today is the sluggish increase in real consumption expenditure. Between 2019-20 and 2022-23 for instance the per capita real consumption expenditure has grown by less than 5 per cent which is less than the rate of growth of the gross domestic product. Even the meagre recovery from the depths of the pandemic in short has been investment-led rather than consumption-led. This has two obvious problems: first, such a recovery is patently unsustainable; it would simply lead to a pile-up of unutilised production capacity, of unused infrastructure, and hence of unrecoverable loans by banks that would inevitably choke off the recovery, apart from threatening the stability of the financial system itself. Second, the basic rationale of growth is to improve the living conditions of the masses; and if the level of consumption of the masses remains stagnant, then there is little point to this growth.

The 2023 assembly election season has started with the polls in Tripura scheduled on February 16 and Meghalaya, Nagaland on February 27. The results of all the three states in the first phase, will be known on March 2. The outcome will be having significant impact on the tempo of the poll campaign in the remaining six states scheduled during the year. Karnataka will be facing elections in the second phase in April/ May this year.

Dhaka: India starts favourite as they take on Bhutan in thneir opening fixture of the SAFF U-20 Women’s Football Championship at the Mostafa Kamal Stadium here on Friday.

New Delhi: Defending champions Kerala and former champions Bengal headline the twelve teams that have qualified for the final round of the 76th Hero Santosh Trophy of which the match for the title will be played in Saudi Arabia.