Little Rann of Kutch during monsoon If Kalpasar, a dream project of converting the Gulf of Khambhat into Asia’s biggest sweet water lake by constructing a dam connecting South Gujarat and Saurashtra coasts, does not seem feasible any more, why not toy with the idea of yet another having a still bigger sweet water lake – this time in the Little Rann of Kutch? Suspicion has gone strong: Ahead of the 2019 polls, the BJP appears the BJP appears to be toying with the idea of making a 4,900 sq km Rann Sarovar an electoral plank.

  Even as  regretting  that investment in India is failing to pick up, in its latest report on four years of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government, Crisil, India's leading rating agency, has lamented that things have been worse for the country's rural sector, which, it has said, "has been riddled with challenges including slower agricultural growth, poor farm price realisation, slowdown in construction activity, and sluggish rural wage growth."

India may have sharply increased the number of bank accounts following Prime Minister Narendra Modi coming to power. However, regrettably, India has the largest share of inactive accounts, too. A just-released World Bank survey, which provides this crucial detail alongside several others, says, "Account owners with an inactive account varies across economies, but it is especially high In India."

India's exports as % of GDP Influential British weekly, "The Economist", has regretted that India's exports, which had reached a whopping 25% of Gross Domestic Product (GSP) in 2013, quadrupling since 1991, not far from the global average, thanks to the liberalising reforms which "helped integrate India into the global economy", this year they have reached the "lowest level in 14 years", around 17-18% of the GDP.

Virtually seeking to give clean chit to the Narendra Modi government's four-year performance, a corporate-sponsored survey, claimed to have been done among over 62,000 "unique citizens" who polled over 170,000 votes, has said that a total of 57% citizens believe that "the Government has either met or exceeded their expectations in the last 4 years" as against 61% during the last year's survey and 64% in 2016.

  In her newly-published  book , controversial US Indologist Wendy Doniger has directly attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for what she creating a climate in which "mythoscience" thrives, pointing out that the government allegiance to Hindutva and its 'eternal dharma' doesn't just have "strong anti-Muslim agendas" but is coupled with "virulent repression of other versions of Hinduism and its history, particularly those that contradict the skewed construction of Hindu history proclaimed by Hindutva."

  By Rajiv Shah  Gujarat's grassroots Dalit rights activist Natubhai Parmar -- who created a flutter by dumping a tractor full of dead cows in front of Surendranagar district office in 2016 following cow vigilantes beating up Dalits belonging to the Rohit community in Una on July 11, 2016 on suspicion of cow slaughter -- has stunned the state administration yet again. Now he has sent across 25 kg of plastic recovered from the womb of a cow to Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani to tell him: Plastics are the main cause of cow slaughter.

  Modi, Suresh Mehta While it is well known that top business houses of Gujarat have liberally contributed to the BJP to meet its electoral expenses, putting Congress in an unenviable position, surprisingly, in 2009-10, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi ruled the state, his government, too, made a contribution, albeit small, to the saffron party!

  A senior Gujarat BJP leader, considered perhaps the only intellectual the state's saffron party can boast of -- one who has spoken out "competently" on developmental issues for its leaders, including Narendra Modi, on critical issues during debates at top English TV news channels -- is all set to stir up a hornet's nest. This leader has declared that the  Kalpasar project , conceptualized in early 1960s by "creating" a huge sweet water lake by damming the Gulf of Khambhat, is "not feasible."

Even as recognizing that “India’s economy has bottomed out from the deceleration caused by one-time policy events such as demonetization and GST introduction”, and the GDP growth has “accelerated to 6.5 and 7.2 percent in Q2 and Q3 FY17/18, with private consumption remaining its main driver”, the World Bank has warned, “Growth alone will not be sufficient for employment rates to catch-up with those of comparable countries.”

In a revelation that should shake up India’s powers-that-be, “model” Gujarat, home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is the slowest among Indian states in completing trial of pending cases of child sexual abuse. The Kailash Satyarthi Children’s Foundation, founded by India’s 2014 Nobel prize recipient, Kailash Satyarthi, has in a new report said, Gujarat would take anywhere between 55 and 200 plus years to complete child sex abuse trials.