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LUCKNOW: The Samajwadi Party government budget, presented by chief minister Akhilesh Yadav, has been termed as an election budget keeping in mind ‘Mission 2014’.

A recent report by HSBC in “The Great Migration - How FDI is moving to ASEAN and India” focused India, Vietnam and Philppines as most beneficiaries of FDI migration from China. The report said that recently much of the Japanese investments in China were shifting towards ASEAN countries like Vietnam and Philippines. It was not only from Japan, but also investors from other countries were re-routing their investment to ASEAN and India. India has emerged an obvious destination as it has similar size of workforce, the report said.

P Chidambaram will be presenting the last full fledged budget of second tenure of UPA government next week. Whether next Lok Sabha elections are held on time in May, 2014 or before it, the next budget is going to be the election budget, because the government will prefer to introduce vote on account next year, if elections take place on time. Five years ago, in 2008 the budget was presented by P Chidambaram. He had presented a feel good budget, which was one of the main reasons for the UPA to stage a come back in the government winning the election with improved margins.

It is indeed unfortunate that the name Shahbag will not evoke much response from the Indian pretenders to ‘global citizenship’. They may have heard of Tahrir Square, and in their amateur glee, may have done the absurd comparison of an antic or two in Delhi and Mumbai to it. Dhaka is the city many Indians believe that ‘they’ liberated in 1971. In fact, the liberation war has not ended. It is still ongoing at Shahbag. Shahbag is one of the main street intersections of Dhaka where the events taking place as I write may have historic consequences.

Writing about the ‘first and only meeting’ of Anna Hazare’s team some time after his break with Arvind Kejriwal, a former IPS officer, Shashi Kant, who recently resigned from the coordination committee constituted by Anna, said that the meeting was ‘ugly and bitter.’ According to him, those who had been with the movement from the beginning ‘boycotted it, alleging maltreatment by some senior members.’

The Deputy Chief Minister and the Akali Dal president Sukhbir Singh had been demonstrating his election management skills by winning the elections. Facing the tough task in Moga, he has resorted to engineering defections in the opposition parties, mainly the Congress and the Manpreet Singh Badal-led People’s Party of Punjab. His penchant for “weakening the opposition through defections” reminds one the pioneering role Haryana played in injecting politics of defection in India’s body politic soon after its birth in 1966.

In 1947-48 Kashmir was the only issue between India and Pakistan. The Simla Agreement of 1972 neutralised that centrality to a large extent. Half century after making of the conflict the composite dialogue process, first ever structural engagement between two countries, reduced the importance of Kashmir to one of the eight issues India and Pakistan need to resolve. Transforming Kashmir from ‘the issue’ to ‘one of the issues’ is a rich reflection of India’s diplomatic craftsmanship. However, Pakistan continued to harp on Kashmir as the core issue.