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The Finance Minister Mr P Chidambaram faces a Herculean task to revive growth, which had sunk to a decade low of 5 per cent, as now officially projected for the current year, when he presents the Union Budget for 2013-14 on February 28, with twin goals of fiscal consolidation and restoring growth momentum.

BHOPAL: Even as the Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan makes strenuous efforts to win over the electorate in view of the forthcoming Assembly elections, the prestige of his Government has been hit by certain sensational incidents which took place during the last few days.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: A disturbing feature of the PJ Kurien issue, which has inflamed Kerala in the wake of the Supreme Court verdict in the Suryanelli rape case, has been the convergence of views between the two national parties, the Congress and the BJP.

Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, in his address to the students of Shri Ram College of Commerce, tried to shed his image of a hardcore Hindutva icon and presented himself as a man of development with catchy phrases. He targeted the constituency of young. The under-35 demographic is now the majority in India, and Modi attempted to address to their perceived grievances with the system. He employed catchy phrases to sharpen his message like — skill and speed, minimum government and maximum governance, mouse charmers, and not snake charmers.

In the years to come the geopolitics in Asia will depend much on the influence of two emerging contending powers namely China and India. The Himalayan kingdom, Bhutan placed in the midst of two rivals, therefore, assumes strategic importance.

Bizarre though it may sound, the Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), the regulatory authority of the civil aviation industry, had told the Supreme Court last month that it has no role in tariff fixation. The plea was promptly turned down by the bench of Justices D K Jain and Madan Lokur.

Since the death of Shiv Sena Supremo Balasaheb Thackeray in November last, there has been much speculation about his son Uddhav and nephew Raj burying their differences and merging their parties to form a formidable force in Maharashtra. The story goes that before his death the senior Thackeray had called Uddhav and Raj and asked them to join forces. Vaidya, maternal uncle of Uddhav and Raj, has publicly pledged to fulfill this dream of the departed Sena chief.

WASHINGTON: Although the international economy has integrated considerably in recent decades, a new database developed jointly by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) and the World Bank reveals that trade costs fall disproportionately on developing countries.