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Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal are gung ho about India’s merchandise exports that is goods exports touching $400 billion mark for the first time this year. This certainly calls for rejoice as India’s goods exports growth has been tepid in the last few years, even in years before Covid pandemic. Over 25 per cent growth this year is something noteworthy. Coupled with this, India’s services exports too is looking up and it is expected to be around $250 billion in 2021-22. This really calls for celebrations as India’s total goods and services exports are likely to exceed $650 billion this year. With foreign exchange reserves surging towards $650 billion India’s balance of payments position is quite comfortable and has thrown enough indications that India is poised for an economic recovery that will take the country back to high growth trajectory.

There is talk of the “fear” on Uddhav Thackeray’s face. And that if anybody started the ‘sliving’, it was the Sena’s partner Nationalist Congress Party. ‘Sliving’ is slang for somebody “slaying” as well as “living it high.” Using the analogy, the BJP-Shiv Sena ‘sliving’ has reached a crossroads. The BJP has lost patience and so, it seems, has the Shiv Sena.

The Hon’ble Calcutta High Court’s decision to entrust the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI)with the power to probe the ghastly Birbhum village massacre instead of leaving the job to the Bengal police, is commendable: it makes any cover-up job planned by the Trinamool Congress (TMC) more difficult. Also unexceptionable is the Court’s insistence that the peoples’ faith in due legal process must be restored --especially in a woefully misgoverned State!

Sonia Gandhi’s recent meetings with the G-23 leaders of her party for whom she did not have much time earlier underlines her realization that Rahul Gandhi has failed to live up to her expectations for him to be an unchallenged, front-ranking leader of the Congress. She has to look for other options, therefore, even if reluctantly.

After the saffron party’s recent victory in the assembly polls, particularly in the northeastern state of Manipur, it was expected that there would be a positive impact in favour of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the northeast, which financially depends mostly on the Centre. The return of the saffron party in the state of Manipur with a majority of its own shows that it is no longer an outsider in the region. The saffron party also won 7 seats in the Christian dominated hill region of the state. It had won 5 in this region in the 2017 state assembly polls. After its success in Manipur, the saffron party has set its target for the upcoming Rajya Sabha polls in the region.

Two-day workers strike across India on March 28-29 on the call of the joint platform of 10 Central Trade Unions (CTUs) - INTUC, AITUC, HMS, CITU, AIUTUC, TUCC, SEWA, AICCTU, LPF and UTUC - and Sectoral Federations and Associations is getting larger support, barring from the pro-government Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS), which has roots in RSS-BJP and naturally supports Modi government, though large number of workers affiliated with the BMS are going to participate in the general strike. In spite of the impending threat of Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA), many roadways and electricity workers, such as in Haryana and Chandigarh, have decided to strike. It should be an eye-opener for the Modi government since the country seems to be heading towards an ugly turn to embitter the already strained industrial relations in the country.

LUCKNOW: BJP has started preparations for 2024 Lok Sabha elections which is evident from w from rainbow coalition of various caste and social engineering reflected in ministry formation of Chief Minister Yogi Adiyanath in Uttar Pradesh. Once again BJP has repeated two deputy chief Ministers giving prominence to backward caste and powerful brahmin community.

With self-interest having been the overarching consideration of US policies, whether domestic or international, or even relating to third party issues, Washington understands India’s Ukraine policy as much as New Delhi does. That explains why the US has been circumspect in criticising India for its stand on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. While President Joe Biden described India’s policy as a Quad member ‘somewhat shaky’, a senior White House official said the other day India’s position at the United Nations over has been ‘unsatisfactory, but unsurprising’ given its historical relationship with Russia.

Now that the Narendra Modi government is firmly in saddle, it has re-opened the issue of linking Lok Sabha and assembly elections as was the practice till 1967. The argument advanced in favour of linking both elections are in these lines. It is argued that one of the major factors impending growth, development and implementation of policies is the fact that the nation is perennially in an election mode, witnessing more than five state assembly elections every year.

If you go into the details of the way the unannounced visit of the Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, was handled in New Delhi on Friday, India was clearly “cold shouldering” the initiative. It is important to remember the visit was from the foreign minister of a P-5 nation and China is a heavyweight in the global order.