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It is not so much the threat from the BJP that has made the Congress bestir itself as the possibility of Mamata Banerjee emerging as the front-runner in the race for leading the opposition camp against the ruling party at the centre.

Like it or not, the Covid-19 pandemic has been a blessing in disguise for India’s fast growing porn film industry, reaching practically every household using 4G cellphones and computers, desk or laptop. For India's millions, forced to stay at home under lockdown conditions, porn films are seen by many as a big entertainer. Anyway, watching pornography on personal devices is legal in India under a Supreme Court verdict in July, 2015. The Supreme Court also orally remarked that it cannot stop an adult from exercising his fundamental right to personal liberty to watch porn within the privacy of his room

Union Government in the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) is not keen to enact a law to prevent mob lynching and hate crimes in keeping with the judgment of July 17, 2018 by the Supreme Court of India in Tehseen Poonawala case. MHA maintains there is no direction in the impugned judgment to this effect, it is learnt officially. However, the MHA shifts the responsibility to the States and Union Territories who administer Police and Public Order in the scheme of the Constitution of India to deal with mob lynching and hate crimes. Hence, anti-mob lynching and anti- hate crime law not the baby of the Centre. Simultaneously, the Centre has not allowed the National Crimes Record Bureau (NCRB) to record incidents of hate crimes for fear of exposure of its and BJP IT Cell’s and Sangh ruled states’ complicity in hate mongering together with the so called captive mainstream media as also on social media.

LUCKNOW: The mega success of cycle yatra of Samajwadi Party has boosted the moral of the party leaders and workers who waited so long for this event. With his cycle yatra Akhilesh Yadav cleverly played the Brahmin card as it was deliberately organised on the birth anniversary of late Samajwadi Party leader Janeshwar Mishra known as Mini Lohia.

COVID-19 has taken a toll on the Indian economy. The size of the economy (read, GDP) shrank from $2.87 trillion in 2019-20 to $2.66 trillion in 2020-21. GDP growth also slowed from around 4 per cent in 2019 to -8 per cent in 2020. Starting from a low base, this year initially the economy was expected to grow at 9 per cent but data got revised downward, and the economy is now expected to grow at 6 per cent. The wider implication of this slow growth is going to fall on income generation and income distribution. Smaller number of job opportunities are getting created. Society is also becoming more unequal; the super-rich are becoming richer and everyone else poorer. The ballooning wealth of Mr Adani and Mr Ambani is a testimony to that fact.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi eased himself between Rajiv Gandhi and hockey wizard Major Dhyan Chand. The Congress says it’s a sly man who does this. Rajiv Gandhi if he was alive would have swatted the fly away with a flick of his wrist. The wrists are a hockey man’s greatest assets, and Major Dhyan Chand’s wrists were flexuous beyond belief. Also, for some unfathomable reason, Major Dhyan Chand attracted the hitleresque to root for him. Adolf Hitler had offered Dhyan Chand a job!

Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) supremo Lalu Prasad Yadav’s meeting Samajwadi Party (SP) patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav has clearly signaled a four-fold strategy to counter BJP’s political narrative in the country, and Uttar Pradesh will be the first testing ground for the moves and counter moves during the Vidhan Sabha elections due early next year. The four-fold strategy will include, the issues relating to farmers, inequality, poor, and unemployed.

Instead of surviving on borrowed human resources and strength the JD(U) supremo Nitish Kumar has started the exercise of reworking his old trickery and the first step he took in this regard was to install the upper caste Bhumihar face Rajiv Ranjan Singh alias Lalan Singh as the national president of the party while he personally has been persuing the mission to raise the demand for caste census of the backwards and Dalits.

There has been a view across the state that the ruling BJP under chief minister Biplab Deb has been witnessing a dip in popularity, although it’s influence largely remains intact. There have been allegations of a declining law and order situation since the saffron party came to power in the state for the first time in 2018. Also, the issue of unemployment, one of the major reasons for the end of 25 years of CPI(M) led Left Front rule, remains a major issue in the state. If all these aren’t enough, the internal dissent within BJP against Biplab has given a negative image to the saffron government.

Bronze seems to be the overbearing flavour of this year’s Independence Day celebrations. There is so much of hype about bronze that one is tempted to go back to the market screens and check if prices of silver and gold have crashed, only to find that both metals continue to command the same values as before. The bronze obsession is on account of the three bronze medals that Indian contestants have won in the Tokyo Olympics.