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The Union Minister of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation (HUPA) Shri Ajay Maken announced on here today that enacting effective central legislation for street vendors of the country for protecting livelihood was one of UPA government’s top priorities and the government would ensure that the law gets enacted at the earliest. He said, “Reign of fear and terror of municipal bodies and police against street vendors must stop and right to secured and dignified livelihood must be ensured through effective legislation”.

Asia suffered a marked slowdown in 2012 amidst continuing global economic uncertainties and their spillovers in trade and finance, but a modest growth upturn is projected for the region, led by China and India, in 2013. Its resilience notwithstanding, developing Asia’s growth had sharply declined to 6 per cent in 2012 from 7.2 per cent in 2011, according to revised down estimates by the Asian Development Bank (ADB). Growth in 2013 is expected at 6.6 per cent.

Political parties across the spectrum have begun moves to position themselves to face the next general elections. For the umpteenth time, the Congress has announced that Rahul Gandhi will play a more important role in the Congress, but for the first time it has clarified that the crown prince will lead the party in 2014 elections, while his mother and the Congress President Sonia Gandhi will be the patron and supreme leader of the party.

MANILA, PHILIPPINES – Asia and the Pacific must overcome skills gaps and scale up technical training to create innovative economies able to generate sustainable, inclusive growth, says a new book by the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

Multiple political affiliations don’t bog the Bachchans down. The First Family of Bollywood is pleased to serve opposing political camps and still live happily together. In the wake of the make or break Gujarat elections, the Bachchan bahu Aishwarya has been roped in to endorse Narendra Modi’s ‘bhavya and divya’ (glorious and divine) Gujarat. Aishwarya seemed only too comfortable parroting, with some improvisations of her own, the same old fried-in the-oil-of- Hindutva tropes of Gujarat as a model state, as she kept insisting how “at home” she felt in Narendra Modi’s home turf.

In South Asia, it is not just resource-rich Myanmar that attracts international attention these days.