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India didn’t know what was cooking in its backyard. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, vaunted vishwaguru – supposedly the only leader with the charisma to talk Russia out of the war with Ukraine – was caught off-guard when a coup forced Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to take a clandestine flight to India, leaving Bangladesh to the mob!

INDIA bloc is now firmly against taxing people on their future crises of life and health, protested within and outside the Parliament against imposition of 18 per cent GST on life and health insurance premium, and demanded their immediate removal. Modi government seems to be unwilling to concede to the demand, though healthcare has already been made unaffordable to the common people, and the GST has made life and health insurance even less affordable to the masses.

Vinesh Phogat’s Olympics debacle is the ultimate manifestation of the uncertainty in sports, where triumph and tragedy often converge in a moment’s breath. Phogat, a wrestler whose athletic prowess as well as her struggle against sports bureaucracy has made her a beacon of hope and defiance in Indian sports, found her aspirations for gold shattered by a matter of grams—100 to be precise. In a cruel twist of fate, Phogat was disqualified from the Paris Olympics because she exceeded the weight limit for her 50kg-category by just 100 grams. The number 100 turns out to be the most inauspicious for India’s sports aspirations.

All banks have a savings account product with minimum balance requirements. If the minimum account balance (MAB) is not maintained, a fee is charged. However, in the interest of financial inclusion, the RBI mandated that all banks should also offer a no-fee zero account balance basic savings bank deposit account (BSBDA). But most banks cheat with a simple con – by converting the zero balance account into a regular savings account by resorting to what is called “implicit consent” and not an “explicit consent”, from the word go.

Even though Supreme Court of India has given its verdict that Lieutenant Governor (LG) of Delhi has power to nominate ‘aldermen’ to the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) under Delhi Municipal Corporation Act, 1957 without aid and advice of the Council of Ministers of Delhi, LG must continue the tradition of consulting for the sake of and to respect the spirit of democracy and federalism enshrined under the Constitution of India.

The sudden and sharpest cut in the import duty on gold and gold doré seems to be quite confusing since even at a 15 percent import duty on gold India’s import of the yellow metal surged nearly 30 percent amounting US$45.54 billion in the last financial year. The gold import in the previous year was valued at close to $37 billion. This year’s budget had drastically pruned the customs duty on gold by nine percent to only six percent, the lowest since June 2013. The customs duty on gold doré has been reduced to 5.35 percent from 14.35 percent.

It might be too soon to judge how well Rahul Gandhi is shaping up as the new Leader of the Opposition (LOP) in Lok Sabha. The current budget session ends in just a few days, so we'll need more time to understand his leadership fully. But he has begun well.

It is ironic that BJP which ten years back claimed itself as the party with a difference having high level of discipline is facing indiscipline and factional infighting in most of the states after the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. . Since the formation of the present BJP in 1980, the party faced organizational problems on different occasions but the dimension of the crisis was never so larger as it is now after ten years of Narendra Modi’s rule.

“Middle income trap” is not an uncommon phenomenon in development experience of nations and countries. While some countries make a promising start, they tend to stagnate after a certain point. They fail to graduate from moderately devoid countries to developed countries with high per capita income.

Five years of no Article 370 is still not palatable for millions of Kashmiris. Even something as primeval as stone-pelting is sorely missed and the fact that violence has ebbed in the Valley to a point where India’s vaunted armed forces have to go to Jammu, where all the encounters with home-grown and foreign-trained terrorists have shifted, is unexciting to say the least. The Modi-led NDA government’s challenge is to hold elections in Jammu & Kashmir before the September 30 deadline set by the Supreme Court.