ICIM-India Today forecasting model indicates mixed scene for the economy in 1981-82

After a year of continual communal strife and tension, an uneasy calm prevails over the small district town of Godhra in eastern Gujarat. Business activity is picking up, and the town is slowly creeping back to normalcy.

To find the Central Government and the highest court in the land seeing eye to eye on a matter has not been commonplace in the past. Circumstances conspired, however to bring about precisely such an outlook.

In an effort to prod public opinion out of its stupor on matters hypocritical, a Nonsense Club has come into irreverent being in Chandigarh.

As the Assam agitation, the long-running saga of the north-east, lumbers on into its third year without ever getting any closer to a solution, the character of the movement is gradually undergoing a change.

If the crowds converging on the 152 acres of real estate near the Yamuna river in New Delhi were any indication, then the third India International Trade Fair was a great success.

Presidents rule has made little impact upon law and order in Kerala. Contrary to expectations the bloody clashes between the RSS and the CPI-M continue unabated almost as if the two parties were determined to prove that they have scant respect for the newly ordained forces which rule the state.

Will former Indian Airlines pilot Rajiv Gandhi, 37, replace his mother one day as India's prime minister? That is a hypothetical question at the moment, but by last fortnight, the stage was set for the junior most Congress(I) Lok Sabha member to take greater strides on the Indian political scene.

The politics of expediency seems to have triumphed once again. The unusual protagonist of this sequel is A.K. Antony, the much lauded idealist who resigned from the Kerala chief ministership to protest his party's support of Mrs Gandhi's candidature at the Chikmagalur by-election.

To all intents and purposes the shotgun wedding between the US and India over the 30-year 1963 Tarapur agreement is irretrievably over and all that remains is the messy divorce proceedings.

Pressure is growing on Mrs Gandhi to reconstitute the 10-member Congress Parliamentary Board (CPB). The present CPB was constituted soon after the 1980 elections and is packed with Sanjay Gandhi's men like Commerce Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Tourism Minister Anant Prashad Sharma and Works and Housing Minister Bhishma Narain Singh, Karnataka's mercurial Chief Minister R.Gundu Rao.

The mood was so festive that a drab term like conference just would not do. At Dewas, an industrial town of Madhya Pradesh, 35 km from Indore, 2,000 eunuchs came together for what was joyously termed as a celebration.

In a complex world, economic decision-making at the highest level can only be based on expert advice. But a wise chief executive tests such advice on the anvil of his own political instincts and experience.

Ronald Reagan took one year to send his new ambassador to India, but he appears to have chosen the right man. Harry George Barnes Jr, 55, a friendly and pleasant man, with blue eyes, is a career diplomat who began his life as a junior officer in the US consulate in Bombay 31 years ago. 

Komal Swaminathan has in the last 10 years emerged as a force on the Tamil stage. His 26 plays, mostly staged by his own troupe Stage Friends, are noted for their penetrating analysis of topical problems. Thanneer, Thanneer has been his biggest success and his most controversial effort so far.

After striking an early and deceptively bold posture in Thodisi Bewafaii, director Esmayeel Shroff has effortlessly lapsed into the smug formula of synthetic Bombay entertainers. His Ahista Ahista is a celluloid edifice built on prefabricated blocks of tear-jerker tragedy, soporific music and a badly shot sequence of an unauthentic karate fight.

Based on Komal Swaminathan's award-winning and sensational play of the same name, Thanneer, Thanneer is bound to rake up as much controversy as the play did for its searing indictment of politicians and bureaucrats.

Part of the trouble of course has been the repeated exposure of the Khajuraho sculptures and, to a lesser extent, of Konarak which have become so totally identified with the text, that not only have other traditions of erotic art been overwhelmed by Khajuraho's clinging cliches of coition but the text itself has rarely been expounded in detail.

A top secret CIA report submitted to US President Reagan last month has called for a massive increase in the agency's spy-in-the-sky satellites.

Oh! What a beautiful loan! The stock markets have greeted the IMF loan with understandable glee for it has come just at a time when the market was preparing for what the marketmen call a technical readjustment, or, in plain English, a downward reaction.

Large advertisements in Delhi newspapers - last fortnight announced that Mother Dairy was being forced to dilute the fat content of milk supplied to the capital's citizens to 3 per cent from 4.5 per cent so that the sale price could remain Rs 2.20 per litre.

Rohtak is a prosperous community 75 km from Delhi by road. This predominantly agricultural district is the home of the famous Murrah buffalo, a highly productive animal sought by milkmen all over the country, and of the equally good Haryana and Hissar cows.

The chicks are down as they have never been before. The remarkable success of India's poultry industry has dimmed considerably this year as it passes through the worst recession it has ever known.

The leftists - particularly the communists in West Bengal - who are kicking up such a big row over the IMF loan would be surprised to know that communist countries are queuing up for the membership of the Fund.

Handlooms for everyone and for every need: this is the Commerce Ministry's theme song as it steps up promotion of India's oldest cottage industry.

After the landslide victory in Bangladesh of ailing President Abdus Sattar, the fifth president in the last nine years, the people of Bangladesh had just one question in their minds: whether Sattar was going to toe the Ziaur Rahman line. Meanwhile, Sattar in his victory speech displayed a mind of his own, especially with regard to the army. An analytical report from Dacca about the President's awesome responsibilities.