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KOLKATA: The two-day eighth edition of Bengal Global Business Summit, held here on February 5 and 6, betrayed chief minister and Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee’s frantic efforts to live down the Opposition’s charge as also a widely prevalent general impression that industrialisation has been a visible casualty during her regime that began in 2011. They obviously mean the absence of big ticket, employment-generating investments in manufacturing ventures, such as, heavy engineering units, integrated steel plants, chemicals and petro-chemical complexes. This, notwithstanding the fact that seven editions of BGBS had been organised by the state government since 2015and claims of the state having received a large number of investment proposals which added up to Rs 19 lakh crore plus.

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) has released its draft political resolution for the 24th congress of the Party to be held in Madurai in April this year. The last party congress was held in 2022 and so the coming congress held after three years, is expected to make an appraisal of the party’s performance in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections as also formulate the best strategy for fighting the ruling BJP and the Sangh Parivar’s onslaught against the core values of the Indian constitution.

The Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has, in her budget speech, announced the government’s intention to amend the Atomic Energy Act and the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act, 2010 (CLNDA). The amendment to the Atomic Energy Act is meant to facilitate the entry of the private sector in nuclear energy production, which, in itself, is a bad idea. However, the amendment to the CLNDA is more dangerous as it dilutes the compensation to be given to people affected by a nuclear accident, whether it be in the public sector or private sector.

No budget in post-independence India had been as openly cynical about the lives of the vast masses of the working people as the one presented on February 1, 2025. All pundits, from the finance minister downwards, agree that the strategy of the budget is to stimulate the economy by boosting middle class consumption through tax-cuts. Such a strategy however would make perfect sense only if the consumption increase of the middle class on account of the tax-cuts was not going to be offset through expenditure cuts elsewhere in the economy, for in such a case the rise in middle class consumption would raise the level of aggregate demand and hence stimulate the economy. But the resources foregone through such tax cuts are to be made up according to the budget by cutting back on government spending: the total expenditure by the central government is supposed to rise by only 7.4 per cent in nominal terms over 2024-25 (RE), which means barely any increase in real terms, and an actual fall as percentage of the country’s GDP.

How come Prime Minister Narendra Modi always invariably makes a symbolic statement on Election Day, doesn’t matter where and when the election. Once, he sat in a cave in Kedarnath and meditated with eyes shut to what people thought of the gimmick as long as they saw him though most of his core Hindu vote-bank were willing partners in the "crime" and marked him as a devout Hindu; therefore, deserving their vote.

Immediately after the happy moments of celebrating our Constitution on January 26 for completing its 75 years, came the budget. The pointers were many but the darkest was the slowdown, continuing and worsening, since last year.

Trump administration finally accomplished its threat and sent back 104 illegal Indian immigrants through its army aircraft which landed in Amritsar on Wednesday. US could not be faulted for deporting the illegal migrants. But it is the manner in which the entire exercise was executed is a matter of serious concern and raises multiple questions; first, why US army plane was used to bring the deportees? Second; why the Modi government did not send its own aircraft to bring illegal Indian migrants? Third, the most important, did it not violate the sovereignty of India? What happened Wednesday is a national shame.

BJP winning Delhi assembly elections held on Wednesday with massive RSS pracharak’s participation in the poll battle is entwined with the basic issue of RSS’s existence and accomplishing its mission of Hindu Rashtra, more than Narendra Modi using the victory to showcase his supremacy. It also gets endorsed by the fact that it has deployed around one lakh cadres and swayamsevaks to help BJP win the election. To ensure that the mistakes of Haryana and Maharashtra are not repeated and its coordination with Delhi BJP leaders works efficiently, RSS has entrusted its four senior leaders, of the rank of secretaries, with the task for monitoring.

Did people vote for change in Delhi? The word reverberated the most in the New Delhi assembly constituency, which had the honour of being represented by AAP convener Arvind Kejriwal since before 2015. The former Delhi Chief Minister on the polling day on February 5 had many anxious moment as the voting trend did not give him the confidence like 2020 polls.

Union Minister of Finance Nirmala Sitharaman labelled MSMEs of India in her budget speech as the second engine in the growth story of India, boasted of significantly helping the sector under PM Narendra Modi led government, and announced several new schemes for them. However, in reality the Centre has been cutting allocations for the Union Ministry of Micro, Medium and Small Enterprises since 2022-23, and the level of allocation for the financial year 2025-26 is still lower than actual expenditure in 2022-23.