Glimpses of Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann’s wedding were reassuring and heartwarming.... Shri Radhe

In the visuals of Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann’s wedding to Gurpreet Kaur on Thursday, there was a sense of heavily-painted curtains parting to offer a heartening glimpse of normal life backstage...

Amid apocalyptic headlines, it is reassuring to catch sight of a member of the ruling political class doing something so ordinary as getting married. In the visuals of Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann’s wedding to Gurpreet Kaur on Thursday, there was a sense of heavily-painted curtains parting to offer a heartening glimpse of normal life backstage.

The nature of politics, with its brutal cut-and-thrust and high-stakes power play can make its practitioners seem remote to the aam aurat and aadmi. Politicians may be representatives of the people but only rarely, despite the facade of intimacy created by social media, do they seem of the people. To watch one such representative — a chief minister, to boot — get married felt like a humanising revelation. This was especially so because it was a small and intimate ceremony, the happy couple posing with the mother of the groom, a menu that offered regular wedding fare, like vegetable jalfrezi, dal makhani and gulab jamun. There were only a few lal batti guests, including Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and Rajya Sabha member Raghav Chadha. This is in sharp contrast to the big, fat Punjabi wedding, with large numbers, lavish multi-cuisine buffets and luxurious venues. Or the showy political wedding where the guest list is as much a demonstration of power and clout as a floor test.

Ever since he took oath of office on March 16, Mann has had much on his plate. His government has inherited a deepening agrarian crisis, a drug problem that can’t simply be wished away, a resurrected spectre of separatist politics and a broken economy that finds it hard to keep pace with the aspirations of Punjab’s young. But even a chief minister must have a life away from the daunting challenges of his job. Lakh lakh vadhaiyan to the newly-weds!..

Om namo shivai Rudra..i ..

The clock is ticking on the issue of energy poverty

Narendra Taneja writes: India's PM spoke on behalf of energy-poor, from Lima to Hanoi to Nairobi. Powerful platforms like the G-20 and the BRICS need to focus more on energy access, poverty and security.

Shri Radhe Sri Radhe.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke for all the energy-poor countries, from Chile to Indonesia to Rwanda, when he invoked the need for the impoverished to be able to access energy as much as the rich global north at the recently-concluded G-7 Summit in Germany. Experts estimate the total number of energy-poor people in Latin America, Asia and Africa to be in the region of three billion people. In South Asia alone, over one billion people are struggling with extremely limited access to energy, despite the LPG and the LED revolutions in India..

BJP’s Murmu gameplan has worked. Opposition loses the plot in presidential elections Shri Radhe

BJP’s nomination of Draupadi Murmu as its candidate for the presidential election has stumped the opposition. Murmu is proving to be an inspired choice for BJP. Her candidature has left opposition parties uneasy because nearly every state has a significant Adivasi belt. With the community most influential in the central, eastern and northeast regions, it is the opposition parties in these belts feeling the heat most.

Shri Radhe

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Mamata Banerjee who showed the greatest urgency and zeal to pitch a joint opposition candidate has all but given the short shift to her partyman and candidate Yashwant Sinha. Mamata has been left bemoaning that Murmu could have been a consensus choice had BJP meaningfully engaged with the opposition. With the Santhal tribe to which Murmu belongs an influential votebank in North Bengal, BJP, for months on the backfoot in Bengal, will be pleased at having scored a big political point over TMC.

Read also: How BJP’s choice is breaking whatever unity opposition has

Not surprisingly, Sinha reportedly won’t be visiting Bengal to canvas votes. The situation is no different in his home state Jharkhand where UPA ally JMM has announced support for Murmu. Even Uddhav Thackeray is finding it hard to drum up support for Sinha in his depleted camp. The outcome of the presidential election is now a foregone conclusion. BJP has yet again bested the opposition, and these parties will be more circumspect for the vice presidential election. Will there be a consensus or will the opposition wait this time for the BJP candidate before announcing a pick?

shri Radhe........

Amusement picture

Air pocket: Show cause to SpiceJet overdue. DGCA has to be more proactive on safety..

India’s civil aviation regulator DGCA issued a show cause notice to SpiceJet after reviewing a series of incidents reported from April 1 in aircrafts operated by it. The broad conclusions of the regulator are that the airline had poor internal safety oversight and inadequate maintenance. Consequently, there’s been a degradation in safety margin. There have been at least seven instances reported since May where there have been questions about SpiceJet. The worst day was July 5 when there were three instances, including one where a Delhi-Dubai flight had to be diverted to Karachi after a snag..None of these problems have arisen overnight. There have been red flags for a while. In SpiceJet’s 2020-21 annual report, the auditor’s report came with qualifications. The auditor raised doubts about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern. Also, undisputed statutory dues such as PF and GST had not been regularly deposited. Financial stress inevitably leads to other compromises. DGCA, thereafter, conducted a financial assessment in September 2021. The finding showed that suppliers are not being paid regularly and that has led to a shortage of spares.

In March, GoI informed Rajya Sabha that there have been investigations into 49 air accidents since 2016. The findings showed that main reasons for accidents were failure on the part of the cockpit crew to stick to standard operating procedures, technical defects and factors related to the weather and ATC. DGCA primarily deals with safety issues. Its record has been mixed. In 2013-14, the US Federal Aviation Authority decided to downgrade Indian civil aviation from category I to category II after an audit brought out shortcomings in safety and maintenance. It had an adverse impact on the international plans of some Indian carriers. Since then, matters have improved and a recent US FAA audit reportedly went off well.

The regulator’s focus on safety has to be relentless – a Vistara flight yesterday experienced an engine snag. There’s a key international safey audit ahead. This one will be carried out by ICAO, a specialised UN agency that deals with air transport. In the last pre-pandemic year Indian aviation companies carried about 141 million passengers. That will be the baseline in a normal year. DGCA’s primary responsibility is to take timely action to make sure that Indian flyers are guaranteed safety standards that match the best. That requires being proactive when problems are at an incipient stage...

The new era of fashion

The accumulation of happy

Vrindavan Girraj Goverdhan parikramaa.