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Better late than never. Finally good sense dawned on Prime Minister NarendraModi in realising the futility of his intransigence on the controversial three farm laws and deciding that it is time for the unwelcome laws to be scrapped.

There is a buzz in political circles that opposition parties appear to be stitching up a workable coalition to take on BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi and informed pundits indicate that TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee is likely to emerge as the Prime ministerial candidate for a non-congress led opposition coalition. This kind of opposition is reportedly being worked upon by political strategist Prashant Kishor after his run-away success in ensuring Mamata won the last West Bengal assembly elections and DMK’s M K Stalin in Tamil Nadu. Earlier Kishore was instrumental in the victory of YSR Congress’ Jagan Moan Reddy in Andhra Pradesh, Capt Amrinder Singh in previous 2017 assembly elections and Arvind Kejriwal in Delhi assembly elections. Incidentally Kishore had contributed to Modi’s victory in 2014 as well.

Muhammad Ali Jinnah, founder of Pakistan, passed away in 1948. However, today in November 2021 he has come alive in the political battlefield of Uttar Pradesh. Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav recently said, “Sardar Patel, Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Jinnah … became barristers and got us independence.” The statement predictably led to a controversy.

Has Narendra Modi’s countdown begun? The New York Times took notice of the decision to repeal the three farm laws and pronounced his weakened state. His domination of the Indian political scenario is in shards outside the window he gazes at his peacocks from. November 19, 2021, Narendra Modi was hoisted by his own petard!

Hyderabad: Jahanvi Bakshi shot her third straight under-par round as she returned 2-under 69, her best after rounds of 70-70 to finish with 4-under 209 to win the 12th leg of Hero WPGT at the Hyderabad Golf Club on Friday.

New Delhi: World no 6, Jyothi Surekha Vennam clinched gold as India bagged 7 medals to finish second behind South Korea at the 22nd Asian Archery Championship at Dhaka.

Digboi: Chandigarh's Yuvraj Sandhu carded a superb five-under 67 in round three to take a two-shot lead at 15-under 201 at the IndianOil SERVO Masters Golf here on Friday.

On a day when Prime Minister Narendra Modi rightly repealed the three draconian farm laws to prevent a political snowball in the ensuing assembly elections, it is worthwhile to ponder over how to make Indian agriculture smart now that the controversial laws have been withdrawn.

The Modi government has been raising taxes on petro-products as its main instrument of resource mobilisation for government spending. This ironically has the dual effect of not stimulating the economy, but stimulating inflation instead. An alternative fiscal policy of raising resources through direct taxes on the rich (of which wealth taxation is the best possible option) and using those proceeds to increase government expenditure would have both stimulated the economy and kept down the rate of inflation.

Julio Ribeiro and Harsh Mander among others. There will be folks who will mock them with “the usual suspects” tag, but then these former civil servants are persistent with their consistency to stop the Union Government from initiating and implementing overbearing actions; cry foul when the law oversteps and makes an ass of itself.