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Narendra Modi’s brief visit to Ukraine has been hailed by the pro-American circles and the corporate media as a big success. According to this version, here is an Indian leader whose international stature has been heightened by the holding of the G20 summit in Delhi and gaining recognition as a leader of the Global South, making a historic visit to Kyiv, thus opening the way for India to play a mediating role in bringing about peace in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

What emerged from the meeting held by the Union Minister of Labour and Employment Mansukh Mandaviya with Central Trade Unions (CTUs) on August 28 is quite disconcerting, since the government is bent upon implementing the newly announced Employment Linked Incentive (ELI) in the Budget 2024-25 which it has been said, would further enrich the corporates in the name of employment generation at the cost of small enterprises and workers, who will have to suffer even more than now.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is in all sorts of moods. She is “deeply sad". She is boiling mad. And she's not in a forgiving mood. But in a generous mood, she was dedicating a Trinamool event to the memory of the Kolkata rape-cum-murder victim, the 31-year-old trainee doctor, who was mindlessly and senselessly slaughtered in the seminar hall of Kolkata’s RG Kar Medical College & Hospital on the night of August 9, leading to nationwide protests.

KOLKATA: India’s population census was initially due for completion in 2024 but was delayed by COVID-19 pandemic. It’s resumption scheduled to begin in September this year will be a pivotal moment. The history of Indian census can be traced back to 1800 during the British colonial period. The first census of an Indian city was conducted in Dhaka in 1830 by Henry Walter who is known as the father of Indian census.

Growing Unemployment rate is not only a challenge to the economic fabric of the country, it occupies the basic tenet on which a county is assessed. Our country is one of the most populous nations and hence its needs are also different, in both size and resources. The human labour imperative for production and growth has to be supportive of employment generation also. But that is not happening because we are now living in an era of growth without jobs. That precisely means losing the way in a blind alley.

Democratic compact between chief minister and Lieutenant Governor of Delhi has broken in the last ten years, LG VK Saxena has admitted in his opinion piece published in Indian Express on August 28, which is just an expression of the fact existing in all states and UTs where the opposition political parties or alliance rule.

The squabble between Rahul Gandhi and Union minister Kiren Rijiju over the lack of representation of backward classes and tribals in beauty pageants has accorded a bit of glamour to the debate surrounding castes. Rahul’s remark, might seem trivial at first glance, but on closer scrutiny, it turns out to be a calculated move by the Congress party to bring the issue back to the forefront of national politics. No wonder, Kiren Rijiju, the leading Rahul-baiter in the Modi cabinet, has joined issue with the Leader of Opposition.

The BJP’s plan to hijack the mass upsurge of the common people in Kolkata, especially women seeking justice for the rape and murder of the young doctor of R G Kar Medical College, has finally failed. The 12 hour bandh in Bengal called by the BJP on Wednesday August 28 in protest against the alleged ‘police atrocities on the protesters on Tuesday who organize march to Nabanna, the secretariat of the state government, flopped as the normal life continued excepting some small incidents.

The Bharatiya Janata Party’s Mandi MP Kangana Ranaut is facing greater heat in the Himachal Pradesh Assembly after the BJP pushed her under the bus for talking out of turn on the farmers’ agitation which rankles as one of the most abject U-turns of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his second prime ministerial term. The BJP doesn’t want to be reminded of Modi losing face.

Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s advice to government-controlled banks to launch special drives to step up deposit mobilization to catch up with the demand for loans may give a wrong impression that the public sector bank (PSB) management does not know the basic principles of banking. How can a PSB mobilise enough deposits when their interest rates on fixed deposits (FDs) vary from as low as 4.50 percent to 5.50 percent? Small banks and finance companies offer nearly double the rates for FDs. The maximum FD interest rate offered by these PSBs, with the exception of Bank of India, for a period varying from seven days to 10 years is 6.5 percent. After income tax deduction at source, the return on FDs from most PSBs could be around anything between 4.05 percent and 5.85 percent.