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Clearly, the current stalemate in bilateral relations between India and Bangladesh may last longer than expected. The recent visit to Dhaka made by Foreign Secretary Mr Harshvardan Shringla, was a good symbolic gesture, but there is little forward movement on two issues. India is yet to announce its stand on the Teesta River Water sharing proposal pending since 2012. Now China has stepped in , offering a $300 million project in Bangladesh’s Northern districts, to take care of local water needs and related problems during the dry season Secondly, during the recent Foreign Secretary level talks in Delhi between India and Myanmar, no special efforts were made to raise the Rohingya influx to Bangladesh, at present numbering over 860,000.

On a day when the entire nation was shocked at the ghastly incident that took place in Hathras of Uttar Pradesh, stood by the side of the bereaved family to share their grief and pain and was showing its sympathy to the parents of the brutalised girl, the conscience keeper prime minister Narendra Modi was desperately striving to detract the attention of the nation from the ghastly crime.

The response of the BJP’s troll army to the Amnesty International’s departure from India showed that Islamophobia was not the only arrow in the Hindutva brotherhood’s ideological quiver.

It is high time that India formulates a strategy to multiply food production and make food available to its poor millions at affordable prices instead of wasting energy on strategising agricultural marketing. Ranked 102nd in the Global Hunger Index (GHI) of 117 countries, India urgently needs to increase food production. This is possible. India boasts an arable land area of 159.7 million hectares, the world’s second largest, after the US which has 174.45 million hectares. India is far ahead of fourth placed China having only 103 million hectares. Russia is placed third with 121.78 million hectares. Yet, India’s food grains (mostly wheat and rice) production target for 2020-21 is barely 298.3 million tonnes as against China’s 347.9 million tonnes. A major consumer of corns, China’s corn production target is 250 million tonnes. China is also a major importer of agricultural products, mostly from the US, to feed its people. Going by a report of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), India is heading toward a record wheat harvest and near-record rice production for 2020-21. Wheat production is forecast at 105 million tonnes while rice production is estimated at 117 million tonnes. In comparison, China’s rice production target is 212 million tonnes and wheat output target 135 million tonnes.

There is no end to farmers’ sufferings in spite of our Prime Minister and his team’s proclamations of their being committed to the welfare of the farmers, at every suicide by farmers, at every mischief committed against them, and at their every loss. It points out two things - either the proclamation of commitment is a sanctimonious lip service, or the government is incapable of carrying out their commitment.

LUCKNOW: CPI national leader Atul Anjaan has appealed to PM Narendra Modi to convene a meeting of all chief ministers to discuss the important issue of rising crime against women in view of recent cases of rape in Hathras, Balrampur in UP and Bara in Rajasthan and other parts of the country.

Yogi Adityanath is a treed cat. He cannot risk getting off the tree and somebody has gone to fetch an axe! Iron barricades set up around the village perimeter speak of the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister’s helplessness in the face of a combined media and opposition parties’ onslaught on the Uttar Pradesh Government for the gang-rape of a 19-year-old who succumbed to a broken spine injury after 14 days of doctors at a Delhi hospital trying to save her, body & soul!

The other day a Madras High Court judge lamented that India, the holy land, has become the land of rapists, where a rape is happening every 15 minutes.

A stalemate has been reached in the Sino-Indian border in eastern Ladakh. What eventually happens, whether the Chinese vacate the Indian territories it has occupied on their own or there is an armed confrontation between the two Asian giants will be known at the end of the winter. But there is not an iota of doubt that the Chinese have been shocked and surprised by the unprecedented toughness of the Indian stand and the rapidity with which India has responded to the Chinese threat this time.

The decision of the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) to part company with its long-term ally need not be surprising except on the question of timing. Coalition theorists would describe the post-2014 NDA as a surplus majority coalition — the BJP has had the numbers in Lok Sabha on its own and all allies have been superfluous. It was sustained because the allies could get a share in power at the Centre and make the most of the alliance in their states. Most of the NDA allies have been unable to win majorities on their own in their states and that forced them to remain with the BJP. But by nature, smaller partners are redundant in surplus coalitions.