Editorial

If running out of patience is a sign of frustration, exhausting the options signifies botched strategy. When it comes to dealing with Pakistan, the nation has lost patience and the Modi government seems to have run out of options.
Border Security Force head constable Prem Sagar and army’s naib subedar Paramjit Singh are not merely the new names in the list of Pakistan army’s barbaric ways but they are permanent scars etched on a nation’s psyche.

Is market mein aur jaan hai ki, ab ludke ga kya? A common refrain these days on whether the market will take a tumble after its high octane journey to 30,000. As the BSE Sensex flirts almost daily with 30,000 and the Nifty Fifty tries to keep its head above 9300, trade has got range bound, after a gangbusters vertical climb, courtesy bulge bracket FPIs and huge liquidity from domestic investors.

The Nifty gained nearly 2 per cent on earnings-led optimism to close the week at 9,304 with heightened action in mid-cap and small-cap stocks. Cement stocks such as ACC and UltraTech gained after upbeat results. Bank of Baroda, Yes Bank and Axis Bank also featured among the top gainers.
In the auto space, M&M gained 6 per cent, followed by Maruti and Tata Motors. The rupee hit a 20-month high on Wednesday at 64.11 per dollar on the back of firmness in equity markets.

Over 40 million members of the retirement fund body EPFO can now withdraw funds from their EPF account for treatment of illness and purchasing equipment to deal with handicap without medical certificates.
The Employees' Provident Fund Scheme 1952 is amended to do away with the requirement of submission of various certificates and proformas for seeking advance for treatment of illness and purchasing equipment required in case of physical disabilities.

Commodities prices traded with mixed sentiments. In global commodity complex, bullion and crude oil gained sharply while the base metals were traded in red. Agriculture commodities too traded mixed. Prevailing geopolitical uncertainties, currency volatility, worries over the increase in US interest rates and physical demand from the top consuming countries affected commodities broadly.

Around the same time when a beleaguered Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mehbooba Mufti met prime minister Narendra Modi on Monday to discuss mayhem created by stone-pelting Kashmiris, around 100 CRPF personnel were being sprayed with bullets in Chhattisgarh’s deadly red bastion, Sukma.
From the Valley to the naxal-infested jungles of Bastar, the dissent quotient is ringing louder. One may not find uniqueness in the latest cycle of violence as naxalism in Bastar and separatism in the Valley have been a national security concern for the last several years.

Once again the Korean Peninsula is on the brink of war. The Korean War that had broken out in 1950 ended on July 23, 1953 with an Armistice Agreement. Until today there has been no peace treaty between the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) and the Republic of Korea (South Korea), that share the Korean Peninsula along the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) as implacable enemies. This heavily guarded dividing line has been and continues to be without any doubt the world’s most dangerous border.

An impression is sought to be created that Kashmir valley is getting out of control for the coalition government because of the escalating disorder created by stone-pelting youth.

Both the National Policy for Farmers’ and the reports of the National Commission on Farmers have placed great emphasis on the income of farmers. In fact, the National Farmers’ Policy states that we should hereafter measure progress in agriculture by estimating the rise in the net income of farmers and not merely on production advance. Currently, our farming is characterised by the preponderance of small and marginal farmers with very low resource mobilising capacity and with high proneness to the vagaries of the monsoon and the market.

MP Joseph in his book My Driver Tulong, (Partridge India, 2017) describes the contemporary situation of Cambodians, in the 21st century, who were simultaneously victims and perpetuators of one of the most forceful genocides in history, where the Khmer killed one another. Who can forget the symmetrical way in which skulls were lined up like pineapples would be traditionally, in an aesthetic fashion, by the Khmer Rouge.