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India is again set to show the way to the developed countries their right place in international negotiations as it recently did in Geneva by not approving the protocol of amendment proposed by the 9th ministerial conference in Bali for enshrining the Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) into the WTO Marrakesh Agreement till its concerns over food security are met. This time the venue will be Lima in Peru where the battle lines are being drawn between developing and developed nations over the issue of halting climate change in the first half of December, this year.

Having known Natwar Singh for over three decades and covering the Congress party as a journalist for almost the same period, I can vouch what he has written in his autobiography—One Life is not Enough—is absolutely correct and there is no exaggeration. The Congress, unfortunately, never defends its leaders, except the top one, when they run into trouble and leaves them to fend for themselves. So was the case with P V Narasimha Rao and, Natwar Singh was no exception when he got embroiled in Oil-for-Food scandal. The then AICC general secretary, Ambika Soni, had been quoting as saying “as far as individuals (reference was to Natwar) were concerned, they were competent to defend themselves” and the Congress party had nothing to do with the scandal.

BHOPAL: Madhya Pradesh is one of the states setting record in food grain production. Agricultural growth has become an USP of development sector for the state. Some of the districts, which used to have very low productivity, are now contributing significantly in the agricultural development of the state. Umaria is one such district, where agriculture was not counted as profitable source of livelihood earlier, but record production growth of paddy in the district during last year has resulted in the promotion of economic growth of the district and contributed significantly to the agricultural development of the state.

It was a coincidence that Modi was there in Nepal, when North Bihar was facing a major flood threat from Kosi. Bhote Kosi, a tributary of Kosi had been blocked by a landslide, which had taken place in Nepal, accumulating a lot of water after the blockage. With Nepal government contemplating blasts to remove the block, people of Kosi belt in Bihar and the Manjhi regime were in great distress. Six years ago in 2008, Kusaha dam on Kosi broke in Nepal, and people of Bihar faced the most disastrous flood in the history of independent India. A tragedy of almost the same scale was hanging over Bihar this time, too, though, the government was trying to minimise the damage by making elaborate arrangement in advance by opening up the relief camps and evacuating, in some cases forcibly, people in high risk areas.

LUCKNOW: Poor performance of Samajwadi Party in 2014 Lok Sabha polls has forced a desperate Mulayam Singh Yadav to join hands with his estranged lieutenant Amar Singh. After being without the man for four years, Mulayam Singh has realised he needs a person of Amar Singh’s background for networking with Modi government and the corporate sector.

What is the politics behind the Insurance bill? It is stuck in Rajya Sabha more for political reasons than for its merits. There is no doubt that in most economic policies, the Congress and the BJP were on the same page or else the reform process could not have moved forward in the past two decades. The Insurance bill has become the casualty because of the politics being played by the political parties, particularly the Congress and the BJP. When the bill was introduced in 2002 by the Vajpayee government, the Congress, which was in the opposition, opposed it. When the Manmohan Singh government brought it in 2008 raising the foreign investment cap from 26 per cent to 49 per cent, the BJP, sitting in the opposition opposed it. Politically it was expedient to oppose it for both. Now it is the turn of the Congress again when the BJP has brought the bill raising the FDI cap to 49 per cent.

India witnessed 823 communal riots across the country during 2013 in which 133 people were killed and 2269 persons injured.

BHOPAL: The surrender of high-profile BJP leader Sudhir Sharma is a major breakthrough in the investigations of Special Task Force (STF) of Madhya Pradesh police into various scams of State Professional Examinations Board, popularly known as Vyapam. After former minister, Laxmikant Sharma, Sudhir Sharma is another important ruling party leader, who was deeply involved in the various scams.

A very few social security measures for organized workers in private establishments in the country could truly boast of a successful instrument for retirees to enliven their otherwise staid evening to come to their aid than the pot of pension fund they contributed to in the career earlier. One such significant outfit set up with the passage of the Employees’ Provident Funds and Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1952 (EPF & MP Act) is the Employees’ Provident Fund Organization (EPFO) which has been administering the Act in letter and spirit down the decades. Currently, it implements three schemes framed under the Act viz., Employees’ Provident Fund Scheme (EPF), Employees’ Pension Scheme (EPS) and Employees’ Deposit Linked Insurance Scheme (EDLI). The overarching objectives of the Act is to provide social security benefits to the working class in the form of provident fund, pension and insurance benefits with the EPFO remit being to enforce provisions of EPF & MP Act, 1952, recover and manage money held in Trust and provide satisfactory service to the members of the scheme.

The erstwhile Soviet Union got its R&D focus wrong in the 1960s and ‘70s. The cold war, nuclear arms race and satellite spying between Moscow and Washington DC made the giant Communist country’s centrally-administered economy focus on defence, nuclear, space technologies and heavy industry. The all-important national security issue had undermined the common man’s needs and ignored consumer and market preferences. Consumerism was taboo under Soviet communism. Moscow found it cheaper and easier to barter some of its high-end and heavy engineering technologies and products with friendly countries such as India to import low-technology consumer items such as soaps and detergents, shoes and leather goods, textiles, made ups, tea, coffee, spices, agri-products, organic chemicals, etc and some industrial products like copiers, dry cell and auto batteries, electrical and audio equipment, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals.