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“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.

The record disbursal of Reserve Bank of India (RBI) profits to the government of India in May 2024 has been in the news. The magnitude of the disbursal caught everyone by surprise. There is a fair bit of confusion as well since many in the mainstream media are trying to paint this move by the RBI in a positive light. In fact, the move raises a host of matters of principle.

With massive unemployment facing the youth, persistent rising costs of living (inflation), unprecedented acute rural distress, crisis in the production sector, growing wealth and income inequality, the union budget 2024-25 presented by the NDA union government on July 23, 2024 has failed to address overall state spending to stimulate aggregate demands and employment, expenditure on specific employment generation schemes, welfare programmes, education and healthcare.

The Union government’s decision to issue a fresh draft notification for nearly 56,825 sq km of the Western Ghats as an Eco-Sensitive Area (ESA) in the wake of the catastrophic landslides that ravaged Wayanad, flattening entire swathes of settlements, markets, and public spaces can only be seen a knee-jerk reaction, rather than a strategic, well-thought-out approach to the region's chronic environmental challenges.

When newcomer Arvind Kejriwal defeated three—time chief minister Sheila Dikshit in her constituency of New Delhi in 2013 assembly polls, jubilant supporters took to streets, hailing the moment when a common man got an opportunity to master electoral politics. Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party soon became the premier force in Delhi politics. In less than a decade, it extended its sway to one more state by winning the Punjab assembly elections in 2022, becoming the only regional party to be in power in two states. Growing footprint and ambitions in states like Goa, Assam, Haryana and Gujarat further catapulted the AAP into the non-BJP, non-congress political space and raised the profile of its charismatic leader.

The verdict of the 7-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court of India allowing sub-quotas within the overall quota for Scheduled Castes (SCs) has a potential to twist the Indian politics in a new direction, since it paves the way for a new structured reservation policy for the country, not only for the SCs, but also for Scheduled Tribes (STs), Other Backward Castes (OBCs), and Economically Weaker Sections (EWS).

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: At a time when all energies should be directed to minimize the impact of the tragedy that struck Wayanad district in Kerala, the Bharatiya Janata Party is politicizing the tragedy to score brownie points. The blame game should have been avoided, at least for the time being.

A grainy picture of an ostensibly ‘Made in India’ part of a bomb in Gaza created a social media maelstrom last month and highlighted a growing concern about India’s arms exports exacerbating the suffering of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

The decadal census, which was due in 2021, has not been held so far. In the union budget 2024-25, no substantial provision has been made for conducting the census. The centre has also not extended the deadline of June 2024 to freeze administrative boundaries which are necessary to conduct the census as per the administrative boundaries like districts, taluk, block or village levels.