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As Sino-Indian rivalry for extending influence in South and South-East Asia hots up, significant changes are taking place in the foreign policy of our neighbouring countries. Sri Lanka and Afghanistan provide a typical example of this.

BHOPAL: Can we describe Madhya Pradesh an orphan state? Perhaps rightly so. According to the constitution executive power of the state shall be vested in the governor and shall be executed by him either directly or through officers subordinates to him. The constitution further provides 'There shall be a council of Ministers with the Chief Minister at the head to aid and advise the governor in the exercise of his functions as the Governor of the state. At present Madhya Pradesh is topless because the present Governor Ram Naresh Yadav is seriously unwell and being treated in a Lucknow hospital. More over a FIR has been registered against him for his alleged involvement in the VYAPAM scam.

On the face of it, Reserve Bank policy announcement, keeping all major parameters unchanged, might appear deadpan. Apparent reactions to the policy have also been along that line. Maybe, that given the current trends in inflation and production growth in industry and services sectors, such a stance might be appropriate. This policy statement has several important aspects which should be noted for a better understanding of the central bank’s overall bearing, not just for now but in future.

Less than two months after it scored a spectacular victory in the Delhi elections to stop the Narendra Modi juggernaut, the Aam Aadmi Party got drawn into an ugly, bruising internal conflict which led to the expulsion of two of its best-known leaders from the national executive.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Are the moneybags and the corrupt tightening their grip on the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), the most powerful ally of the Congress in the United Democratic Front (UDF)?

“If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal”. Haryana has, however, proved the Russian-born American writer and feminist Emma Goldman’s saying wrong. The state is witnessing changes in its political, ideological and governance arenas but the voting has neither been made illegal nor is it likely to be given India’s vibrant democracy.

In today’s multipolar world several key actors are engaged in defining their spheres of influences. The two main pillars in this game of evolving geo-politics are trade and security. While geo-politics is the driving force, geo-economics is being designed to be its base. A number of mega regional trade arrangements (RTAs) are being attempted to be floated by main actors. Such attempts are likely to squeeze India’s space for developing its own security and trade architecture and hence it needs to step up its diplomatic engagements with prospective partners for its security interests and align itself with combinations or trade blocs that may prove conducive to its interests.

The BJP, and especially its gung-ho prime minister, might not have imagined that the party would be seen to be under considerable pressure at its first national executive meeting in Bengaluru after its Lok Sabha victory.

People of Bengal are yet to lose their heart and hope but undeniably are in a state of shock as to why their chief minister Mamata Banerjee has allowed the things to drift. Whether it is the deteriorating law and order or the suicides of the potato growers or restoring the sanctity of the educational institutions, the Trinamool Congress Supremo has been found to be suffering with the malaise of trust deficit. She does not act as she has no faith in the channel of independent information. It is classic paradox that Mamata is not willing to subscribe to the information on suicides by potato growers.

In 2015, the toughest challenge for Sonia Gandhi is to hold her party together and she has begun acting firmly towards that direction. She may not be Indira Gandhi but she has inherited some of the qualities of her late mother-in-law. In August 1977, less than six months after Indira Gandhi and her party were routed in the anti-Emergency backlash, she mounted an elephant and waded through waist-deep water to reach Belchi, a Dalit village in Bihar, where dalits were mercilessly butchered. This small step changed the course of history. In 2015, Sonia Gandhi, demonstrating almost similar grit, took up the Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act and farmers’ issues. In due course, she will take up other economic and social issues. Let us see if the history repeats itself.