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Finance Minister Mr P Chidambaram utilized the vote-on-account budget for 2014-15 he presented to the Lok Sabha on February 17 to project a story of “unparalleled” growth record of UPA Government in its ten years of power (2004-14) coupled with an appeal to political parties to carry forward left-over tax reforms (DTC and GST) and ensure continued stability of the Indian economy.

There is the Congress, the outer Congress, the inner Congress and the inner-inner Congress. Janardan Dwivedi, a long time fixture at the Indira Congress, is a member of the last circle. The sovereign who wants to push something unpopular also wants to know how deeply unpopular it is. One way to do this is to make someone very important but not supremely important to say something that the party can distance itself from given the reaction is too harsh. Debates around caste-based reservations, especially revisiting its principles, fall in that category.

The political realm of West Bengal was taken by storm when the eminent Gandhist social activist Anna Hazare decided to promote a political figure for the first time as the prime ministerial candidate for 2014 Lok Sabha election: that figure being none other than the current chief minister of West Bengal Ms. Mamata Banerjee.

When Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal was protesting outside the Rail Bhavan on 21st January and asked the people to throng the Rajpath prior to 26th January’s Republic day celebration, it was amply clear where he was heading towards. His January protest was his own way to start election campaign for the next Lok Sabha. He was using his office of Chief Minister to project him on the national level as the anti corruption crusader only to become a force during and after the Lok Sabha election.

New Delhi: New Delhi World Book Fair-2014 was kicked off by the President of India Pranab Mukherjee here on Saturday sending strong signals of India developing relations with Poland - a country having rich literature and a home to many Nobel laureates.

Even though government has been able to introduce the bill seeking to create Telangana, bifurcating Andhra Pradesh, it is doubtful whether the measure would be passed in the two houses of Parliament? Mere introduction of the bill in the Lok Sabha witnessed such ugly scenes as never before seen, resulting in suspension of 16 members, mostly of the Congress, for the rest of the session. One wonders what will be the scene when the bill is taken up for consideration on Wednesday.

New Delhi: With a view to ensure cyber security in the country, the Indian government has approved setting up of two semiconductor wafer fabrication (FAB) manufacturing facilities in India.

Unless a miracle happens, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will perform disastrously in both West Bengal and Assam in the ensuing 16th parliamentary elections. The extravagant campaign with media hype, branding it as the ‘Hindu nationalist party’ that the Dakar-based Marxist economist Samir Amin characterised as a party of the ‘rightwing Hindu comprador’, will end in a damp squib. In West Bengal, the possibility of re-election of its sitting MP Jaswant Singh from the Darjeeling constituency seems very bleak as the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) may not support his candidacy this time again.

Why is the United States so paranoid about India’s pharma industry? How genuine are its concerns over oft-alleged laxity in manufacturing processes and practices followed by India’s drug manufacturers? Can India’s drug industry afford to take the concerns of the powerful US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) lightly?

New Delhi: Just few days before the finance minister P Chidambaram is slated to present the interim Budget in Parliament and annouce the country's growrth figure, a study by the United Nations said that the Indian economy grew at 4.8% in 2013 and is slated to grow at 5.3% in 2014 and 5.7% in 2015.