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CHANDIGARH: Will Bihar results be repeated in Punjab in the 2017 state assembly elections? Experienced political pundits would avoid giving an answer to the question. Assembly elections are less than a year away and a week can be a long time in politics to upset predictions.

If the country’s military forces are 70 per cent import dependent on critical armament supplies, it must follow a realistic approach to get hi-tech foreign defence hardware suppliers to make in India. The dream of India, the world’s largest defence importer, to emerge as a major arms producer may take much longer to turn true under its current defence FDI policy no matter what assurances it may receive from global defence technology giants and suppliers. Normally, foreign high-end weapons manufacturers would like at least a controlling stake in co-production ventures in India. Until now, India, has done little to establish itself as a major manufacturer-exporter of military arsenal. In the $400-billion-plus global legal defence export trade in 2014-15, India’s share was just around $100 million, supplying mostly low technology items and parts to some 22 countries. In contrast, China’s weapons export in 2014-15 was worth $20 billion. Along with established players Germany and France, China became the world’s third largest war equipment exporter – all having an equal market share of five per cent each. For inexplicable reasons, India had mostly preferred import to local production of sophisticated weapons. The Indian military has remained high on its combatants’ strength and low on lethal power.

Nitish Kumar’s success in the Bihar elections appears to have persuaded him to spread his wings. Hence his decision to take the Mahagathbandhan (grand alliance) route to power in UP after it proved to be the right political recipe for Bihar.

The specter of Partition continues to loom large in the politics of the subcontinent. How one imagines the Partition and how it came about is also intricately tied with how one imagines one self – this being particularly true for those born late enough to have no direct access to any first-hand pre-Partition lived experience and consciousness. Present residents of certain urban centres of the subcontinent would probably find it hard to imagine a contemporary Karachi as a Hindu Sindhi dominated city or a Dhaka as a Hindu Bengali dominated metropolis or a Delhi whose dominant public urban culture is Islamicate in a Persian influenced manner or a Kolkata whose Muslim Bengali population rivals and even surpasses its Muslim non-Bengali population in power, prestige, cultural and economic influence. Karachi, Delhi, Kolkata, Dhaka – as they are today are all cities shaped or mis-shaped by Partition.

Why is Mehbooba Mufti delaying formation of the government with BJP? If she forms government along with the BJP, she may lose her vote bank in the valley. The late Mufti Mohamed Sayeed could manage a coalition with the BJP because of the weight of his personality. This is not so with his daughter. Inability of Mehbooba to form the government would mean a mid-term poll which she wants to avoid. It would be a tough call for her to agree to elections at a time when she knows the party is losing its foothold in PDP held constituencies due to its alliance with the saffron party.

The governor of China’s central bank kept on saying in the G-20 meeting at Ankara that the growth bubble in his country had “burst”. Chinese stocks have plunged 40 per cent since its June peak. The slowdown in the Chinese economy and the erase of US $ 5 trillion equity were the focal points of discussion at the summit. No one could believe that Chinese economy would grow by 10 per cent forever at the summit. The downturn from the double-digit growth was faster than expected and underlined the global repercussion, said Robert Samuelson, columnist of the Washington Post. In between 2007 to 2011, China’s GDP grew by annual average of 10.6 percent. The average growth during the following three years was 7.6 percent. In 2015, China’s GDP grew by 6.9 per cent. IMF forecasted further dip in 2016 to 6.3 percent.

Notwithstanding the governments that care for its people being in office, human trafficking has assumed a magnum dimension and has become a multi crore business in Jharkhand. Though the actual number of girls and women smuggled out of Jharkhand is not available, according to reliable intelligence sources nearly 7,000 children have gone missing in Jharkhand over the past 10 years. Of these around 2,000 are yet to be traced.

NEW DELHI: It is high time India develops hub airports in the country like Dubai or Singapore airports to reap the benefit of resurgent global tourism and ever increasing business travel. Hub airports will ensure seamless travel to national or international destinations from under the same roof.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The ‘Saritha bomb’ continues to batter the Congress and the party-led United Democratic Front (UDF) Government. So damaging are the latest revelations that the Congress and its UDF partners do not know where to run for cover.

Never mind the sugary bilateral rhetoric: the regional rivalry for domination between India and China in Asia remains as keen as before.