Dr. T. Sadashivam

The importance of Social Media is increasing day by day in almost every country and, almost all the sectors in the society are influenced by it including politics which also not immune from this. In the upcoming 17th Indian General elections. how this social media is going to play its role is discussed. Along with example from America's 2016 Presidential Election and its impact.

In the 21 st century, the economy of many countries is transforming towards secondary and ter-tiary sector. And India is also not immune from this phenomenon, and our economy is slowly moving towards manufacturing and service sector. However, still the contribution of primary sector i.e., agriculture towards employment in the country is unimaginable. Especially this becomes more important in the context of more than majority of our population residing in rural areas; and their main source of activity is agriculture. Unfortunately, the agriculture sector since quite long time going through a difficult phase. In this context, this paper tries to decode the economy survey 2017-18 for the agriculture sector. This is very important in the context of the call by our Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi to double the farmer's income by 2022.

So, the Jodi number one of (shri Narendra Modi and Amit Shah) again did it for BJP and is non-stoppable, which is proved again by the Karnataka Elections. Of course, BJP has not got the required majority number of 112 seats in the elections by its own. However, still, BJP can take a lot of confidence from the first semifinal (Karnataka elections) out of four semifinals (Chhattisgarh; Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan) to be played between BJP and Congress, during November-December 2018, before the final (i.e. next year General elections 2019). One other thing which also proves and many political pundits ignore is the strike rate of Narendra Modi and Amit Shah against the incumbent governments belongs to the opposition party. They are very good at exploiting anti-incumbency factor. Of course, in case of Gujarat somehow they manage to overcome anti-incumbency against their own government and re-elected again to power with a reduced number of 99 seats in 2017. Again it's proved that there is no match for the election machinery of BJP from the opposition party. The Karnataka elections are very important for both the national parties. For Congress, it is the first election fought under the leadership of President Rahul Gandhi and also, wants to hold on the last major State bastion other than Punjab. The importance of this election for Congress can be gauged from the fact that Sonia Gandhi addresses her first rally in nearly 2 years. However, for BJP to inroads into southern states then Karnataka is the gateway, wherein the past also in 2008 for the first time they formed a government in the southern State. So after inroads into northeast India now BJP wants to move towards southern India and become a Pan India party.

The main purpose of this article is to highlight the fact that, contesting and winning elections in India is becoming a distant dream for the common man, if you don’t have money power; or in other words, money plays an important role in politics in India. To justify the aforementioned statement, the press release report dated (24/12/2012 and 29/1/2013) of Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and National Election Watch (NEW) have been analysed. The report has documented for all the 182 elected MLAs in the 2012 Gujarat Assembly election.

Seventy years ago, India became independent from British rule. Since then and till now, we have seen several changes in our society, and India of 2017 is not same as of 1947. Truly, it’s a great achievement especially, if we compare with many of those countries who also, became independent during the late 1940s and early 1950s (from Asia; Africa and Latin America etc). Then surely we can say proudly that, we have preserved our independence; and the reason for that goes to the ‘Democracy’, which we adopted and till now, globally it is, accepted that ‘India is really a functional and largest democracy in the world’. Of course, briefly, for some time (21 months), we had national emergency( from 1975-77) imposed by late Prime Minister Mrs. Indira Gandhi’s government, which put a brake on our functioning democracy and, which is also called as the darkest period of Indian democracy. Now it was 42 years over after that episode. 
The aforementioned about our democracy is basically concerned about ‘Political Democracy’, where through the action of ‘One Man One Vote’, we achieved the basic goal of democracy only. But, apart from that, still the two other goals of democracy i.e. ‘Social Democracy’ and ‘Economic Democracy’, we are far away from achieving those goals. Thus, in this context, it’s essential to recollect what Dr. B.R. Ambedkar famously said, ‘on the 26th of January 1950, we are going to enter into a life of contradiction. In politics we will have equality and in social and economic life we will have inequality. In politics we will be recognizing the principle of one man, one vote and one vote, one value. In our social and economic life, we continue to deny the principle of one man, one value. How long shall we continue to live this life of contradictions? How long shall we continue to deny equality in our society and economic life? If we continue to deny it for long, we will do so only by putting our political democracy in peril….’

The true inclusive society cannot be achieved, without the inclusion of more than majority of population, who are living in rural areas of the country. In India, more than 800 million of population lives in the rural areas of the country. Even after more than 6 decades of independence, their development is utmost important for our society. In this context, the Union Budget 2016-17, has taken many initiatives. This article will discuss about the important initiatives undertaken by the Union Government for rural development, for the financial year 2016-17. The focus is on essential sectors of rural development, which can go long way in promoting and developing rural areas and the people reside in it.