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The rise and rise of AAP has brought out a new phenomenon that people are willing to give a chance to any viable alternative. It is also the success of the volunteer model where the party was steered by young volunteers.

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 and commitment.

With barely two weeks to go for the presentation of the Rail Budget in Parliament, expectations run high this time round that the Ministry is in capable hand in Mr. Suresh Prabhu with proven caliber to set things right and launch the carrier in a growth path. The unassuming, urbane and with a no-nonsense approach and being grounded in the finicky auditing profession, Mr. Prabhu has been a trusted colleague of the Prime Minister Mr. Modi. Given his unobtrusive style of functioning, the Railway Minister had hit the ground running from the day one he assumed office after the exit of his predecessor Mr. Sadanand Gowda in the last Cabinet reshuffle. The Minister lost little time in putting in place a process re-engineering through greater delegation to zonal and divisional managers, besides ensuring greater transparency and accountability in the system that is the arterial mode of monopoly carrier for far too long with its settled habits that literally die hard unless the leadership is decisive and result-oriented to shed its complacency.

This winter has been most severe on the country’s teeming poor millions not because of any rapid fall in temperature, but because of an unprecedented food price inflation. This is despite the fact that India’s food and farm production are steadily going up. For the first time, the country’s annual food production is systematically outstripping the population growth. Yet, food shortage continues. Official data put India as one of the world’s top farm producers. Naturally, the question is: who is eating away the poor man’s food? What is contributing to food shortage leading to massive spurt in food and vegetable prices in the retail market?

The media outreach programme of the NDA Government, discussed and chalked out in a day long workshop at New Delhi on February 2, 2014 and presided by the Union Minister of Information and Broadcasting, Finance & Corporate Affairs, Arun Jaitly is a well meaning exercise intended to strengthen the Press Information Bureau (PIB), the prime official media for dissemination of all official information and publicity of the Government of India and other official media units for keeping the people better informed about policy decisions of the Government and benefits accruing to the people.

It was indeed a Super Tuesday. The BJP was routed and the Congress completely decimated in the Delhi Assembly elections. This was unexpected and not even projected in the Exit Polls which had forecast a landslide victory for the Aam Admi Party but not a setback of this magnitude to the BJP. Delhi elections were not an ordinary state election— unheard off, never witnessed in the annals of history. It was a battle which could reshape the very nature of urban politics in a changing economy and alter equations at the national level. Increasingly politically aware and aspirational voters were looking for an agenda which mirrored their daily anxieties—prices, corruption, security, water and power—and they have found it in Kejriwal’s assurances.

The BJP’s massive defeat in the Delhi elections is a result of its failure to observe the rules of raj dharma of neutrality which ensures that no community lives in fear.

For quite some time politics in North-East India has been dull as ditchwater. Neither the much-talked-about and much-awaited Cabinet reshuffle by Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi last month, nor the brewing rebellion against Nagaland Chief Minister T. R. Zeliang by some legislators of the ruling Naga People’s Front (NPF) could draw much attention in the national media. But suddenly there was a quickening in the situation. Courtesy, the ‘Vision Document’ released by the BJP on the eve of the Delhi polls.

The state of political parties, quality of governance and capabilities of the state’s chief minister are the major factors which generally determine the stability of a regime and also future course of politics. How these factors are and will influence Haryana’s post-poll politics?

What made the satrap from Uttar Pradesh, the Samajwadi Party supremo, Mulayam Singh Yadav to intervene in the matter of Bihar and direct the Bihar JD(U) leadership to bring in Nitish Kumar again as the chief minister? This question has been haunting the politicians and the political establishment of Bihar. Was it the compulsion of the politics of merger and unification or class conflict of the backward castes versus the dalits that made Mulayam reach out to the JD(U) chief Sharad Yadav? Not only Mulayam even Nitish’s big brother Lalu Prasad had objected to Manjhi’s speeches and his style of functioning. Earlier there was only one stakeholder, and he was Nitish Kumar. But suddenly a number of individuals have descended on the political scenario as the major stakeholders.