Encouraged by the growth projection of 7.4 per cent by the new series with a new base year, the Government think tank report ‘The Economic Survey 2014-15’ has urged for pushing forward the ‘Big Bang’ reform agenda just before the presentation of the annual Union...
Railway Budget for the current year is novel in many ways. Departing from the usual emphasis on laying new tracks and raising passenger fares and prescribing slabs for freight rates, Suresh Prabhu’s budgetary proposals concentrated more on the strategy for improving passenger service, amenities and safety; capacity expansion; decongestion of heavy haul...
Article 370 has remained a bone of contention since its insertion in the Constitution of India. Two schools of thought have been exploiting this provision to suit their political ends and the people of Jammu & Kashmir are the principal victims of this controversy. Wherever I go, be it a political or social seminar or get-together, J&K is the only issue...
After the BJP’s victory march was halted in Delhi by the new Aam Aadmi Party, leading to its decimation in the state, the ruling party at the Centre has become cautious about not ignoring issues relating to the common man. Apart from being aggressive on market reforms and alluring foreign direct investments (FDIs), the upcoming Union Budget and...
If one were to identify a single cause for the rout of the Bharatiya Janata Party in Delhi earlier this month, it would be the astonishing fact that it fought the 2015 election in a time warp of 2013, refusing to acknowledge much less address the crippling problems facing the citizenry, and relying solely on the Prime Minister’s popularity to overcome...
The EU met again and, with the Greek vote, they prolonged more sanctions on Russia. In the meantime, the EU-backed junta is continuing to kill scores of civilians in Novorussia every day. And while for “Charlie”, we saw millions in the streets, nobody seems to care. Worse, the EU is backing the Nazis murderers (I won’t even mention...
The Novorussians are in control of most of Debaltsevo (officially 90% officially 100% as of midnight 19 Feb. GMT). More relevantly, there is no more organized resistance. Russian sources say that about 1000 junta soldiers have refused to surrender and are hiding in the outskirts or have fled to the south end of the cauldron. The Novorussians are not even bot...
Thanks, but no thanks. That would be the reaction of discerning missionaries to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s much awaited intervention in the ongoing discourse on tolerance and religious freedom. He has obliged them at last, but with a twist which negates much of...
New Delhi has moved an inch forward to secure the Indian Ocean from the growing Chinese influence. It has seized the right opportunity with the change of leadership in Sri Lanka to strike a civil nuclear pact with the nearest island and agreed to expand defence and strategic cooperation, including “the trilateral format” with the Maldives. The civil nuke pac...
Without a doubt, the intransigence of European authorities has nourished the way for Athens to adopt positions closer to those of Moscow. To date, the creditors maintain their refusal to modify the terms of debt repayment (Greece has a debt of 315 billion euros, 175% of their GDP). Weeks before the election, the European troika (made up of the International ...
I have to say that I am both amused and appalled at the completely over-the-top reaction of most commentators to what we might as well call the Mink-2 Agreement (M2A). Apparently, analysis has been abandoned altogether and has now been replaced with hyperbole and vociferous but empty statements. Reading some of the comments made here one could be forgiven fo...
The lot of the embattled poor Indian farmer keeps deteriorating with the passage of time. According to the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) data released on December 19, 2014, during the last decade the bloated debt of Indian agricultural households has increased almost 400 per cent while their undersized monthly income plummeted by 300 per cent. Even th...
Economy watchers are a baffled lot these days. The latest GDP series has caught them completely off-guard. They believed for years that the Indian economy had entered a prolonged slowdown in 2011-12. This was indicated by the gross domestic product (GDP) numbers and what almost everyone, small or big, found to be largely consistent with his particular busine...
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists’ #SwissLeaks initiative on secret account holders in Switzerland’s HSBC bank has brought the spotlight back on the funding of Al Qaeda leader and 9/11 mastermind, Osama bin Laden. A US Senate report of July 2012 had publicly revealed links between HSBC clients and Al Qaeda after a raid on...
As is too often the case, our nation’s leadership and much of its followership display patterns of thought and behavior that would have an individual sent to an institution for the extremely confused and dangerous. Consider:
After eight years of selling out on promises made to his supporters, the president pays lip service to a few that enable...
Easing of sanctions against Iran by the Western powers coupled with the drawdown of NATO forces from Afghanistan has prompted India to speed up its development plans of the Chabahar port. It is an opportunity for India, which has so far been denied direct overland link to Afghanistan by Pakistan, to take up the development of Chabahar port with all sincerity...
Q: What is your viewpoint about the situation in Donbass region? Could you give us some prognosis of further development of the Ukrainian conflict?
For centuries Ukraine was part of Russia and then the Soviet Union. When the Soviet Union collapsed, Washington insisted on breaking Ukraine apart from Russia. This separation was required both by the...
Part one (On 6th February 2015)
They have apparently continued for 5 hours and are still not finished though it seems some sort of document is being prepared for tomorrow. Three comments: 1] If negotiations go on for 5 hours that does not suggest a smooth and conflict free...
Several Chinese cities have been in the news over the past decade for blinding smog that made breathing difficult without surgical masks. Recently, New Delhi’s smog-laden air drew unfavourable attention due to the visit of US President Barack Obama for the Republic Day celebrations. American media reports said the US President’s two hour long exposure at...
In several high-profile meetings in Beijing Feb. 1-2, the leadership of China, India, and Russia sought closer cooperation, at a time when the global financial structure, under control of Wall Street, the City of London, and other financial hubs in Europe, is on the verge of collapse, and the West is deepening the security crisis around the world, by...
The Charlie Hebdo attack and its aftermath in the streets and in the press tempt one to dust off Samuel Huntington‘s 1996 book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. Despite the criticisms he provoked with that book and his earlier 1993 article in Foreign Affairs, recent events would seem to be proving him...
In February, it is a long way to the spring, lamented Joseph Brodsky, the poet. Indeed, snow still falls heavily in Moscow and Kiev as well as in the rolling steppes that form Russian-Ukrainian borderlands, but there it is tinted with red. Soldiers are loath to fight in the winter, when life is difficult anyway in these latitudes, but fighting already...
Last week, I wrote about the crisis of Islamic radicalism and the problem of European nationalism. This week’s events give me the opportunity to address the question of European nationalism again, this time from the standpoint of the European Union and the European Central Bank, using a term that only an economist could invent:...
The world eagerly awaits Nepal’s transition to a full-fledged republic with a Constitution that aims to empower all segments of society. The small Himalayan country has already shown the world how to abandon the path of bullets and opt for ballot and to assimilate insurgents into the mainstream. The second Jan Andolan (people’s movement) resulted in the over...
Holocaust, Crusades, Portuguese and Spanish inquisitions, Salem witch trials, Genocide of the native peoples of the Americas and Caribbean, Genocide of Middle Eastern peoples, Genocide of Africans and Australian Aboriginals, the Portuguese Inquisition in Goa and Sri Lanka, the list can go on. These are unforgivable crimes committed by European Christians...
The crisis gripping the US state apparatus is directly threatening the survival of the Empire. This is no longer merely the opinion of Thierry Meyssan, but the subject that is shaking the ruling class in Washington to the point that the honorary president of the Council on Foreign Relations is demanding the resignation of the chief advisers of President...
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During the colonial era Europeans considered themselves unique in having a sense of history. All the rest of us, including the Chinese with their exact millennial court records, were deemed to have a sense of passing Time but not of history. That assessment had two elements. One was a sense of racial superiority ...
The story about the past of the Roma people living in Europe is a dramatic one; the Roma are in fact brethren whose ancestors left Bharat one thousand years ago. India will surely be able to understand the plight of today’s Roma people and the necessity of strengthening political and cultural ties between Indian and Roma civil societies. India can contribute...