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When the textile landscape of the country and the world is changing fast, it would not be enough for India to only celebrate National Handloom Day every year on August 7. The country will have to do much more than celebrating the day by releasing commemorative document and press releases giving an account of what the Union Government has been doing. Government actually needs to give proper attention to the structural issues that continue to affect the industry’s competitiveness, low and uncertain incomes, ageing artisans, powerloom imitation, fragmented marketing channels, technological gaps, export compliance, and week global branding.

In the last few weeks, it has become patently clear that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is now permanently afflicted by a reality inversion syndrome. For him, the GenZ movement and the distinct anti-people direction of his governance is coming into direct conflict with the grave reality that has overtaken the people. The sure giveaway has been his repeated nocturnal reels and video messages which he is designing to address the yawning gap between not just his style of governance, but essentially the nature of confrontation that has characterised the developments of the last few weeks.

The Reserve Bank of India announced its new credit policy on August 5, keeping the policy interest rates unchanged. The policy interest rates are an extremely important tool used by a central bank for maintaining price stability and the pace of the economy.

While receiving the Lokmanya Tilak National Award in Pune in recognition of his contribution to strengthening India’s National Security Advisor Ajit Doval urged the younger generation to be mindful that freedom should not be understood merely as the liberty to do whatever one desires. To drive home the point he appealed to the youth to dedicate themselves to serve the nation and flagged that the freedom they enjoyed is very precious in contrast to the colonial era when Lokmanya Tilak struggled and faced hardships which the present generation in India would hardly imagine. “Every Indian, especially our youth, needs to reflect on his words, consider the vision he held for India and the spirit of nation-building he embodied,” Doval remarked.

Seven years have lapsed after the BJP led NDA government under Prime Minister Narendra Modi abrogated article 370 of the constitution withdrawing special status conferred on the state of Jammu & Kashmir soon after independence when the Maharaja acceded to the Union of India under the then Premier Jawaharlal Nehru.

NEW YORK: Something has shifted among the Democratic electorate. That was already clear from Zohran Mamdani’s trouncing of establishment royalty Andrew Cuomo in the New York mayoral race last year, punctuated by a series of yet more socialist wins over establishment incumbents seven months later. And it was clear from the primary election in Maine, where Democratic voters rejected their own governor in favor of a left-populist firebrand dogged by scandals who had never held political office.

LONDON: Hiroshima Day on August 6 commemorates the atomic bombing of the Japanese city by the United States 81 years ago. The atrocity not only killed hundreds of thousands instantly and condemned many more to painful, lingering deaths. It took the world into the atomic age: one in which wars, already hugely more destructive than in previous eras thanks to industrialisation, could plausibly spell the end of human civilisation itself.

Bankipur may eventually be remembered not as the constituency that discovered Prashant Kishor, but as the first place where the anger dramatised by the Cockroach Janta Party acquired an electoral address. The distinction is crucial. Kishor’s victory does not amount to popular acceptance of a coherent alternative to Narendra Modi, the Bharatiya Janata Party or the political order built around them. It is, instead, an unmistakable act of rejection — a vote cast less for a destination than for an exit.

Even seven years after the abrogation of Articles 370 and 35 (A), there seems to be no reconciliation between the Centre and the people and political parties of Jammu and Kashmir who observed August 5 as black day and organized protests across the Union Territory, and lamented the loss of their special status under the Constitution of India, and even loss of their statehood, which they are still waiting to be restored as promised by the Union Government led by PM Narendra Modi. On the other hand, the J&K administration and the BJP celebrated the day.

The biggest oil companies of the world have soared their profits at a record level in the last three months of the global energy crisis due to the US-Iran war involving other Gulf countries. The oil monopolies are taking full advantage of the crisis situation in the Gulf in raising the oil prices in the international market at the cost of the ailing economies and the global consumers.