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So far Asian countries, particularly India and Pakistan, have faced the brunt of terror but the menace has now spread to Europe. The continent has faced, perhaps, for the first time, the terrorist attack of this magnitude when the press was attacked. In the worst form in France in recent decades, masked gunmen shouting “Allahu Akbar” stormed the Paris office of Charlie Hebdo, a French satirical weekly for lampooning religion including radical Islam, killing 12 people—two policemen and ten journalists including the editor—before escaping in a car. Speaking fluent French, the gunmen are believed to be from al Qaeda. They were shot dead by the French police on Friday.

LUCKNOW: Bahujan Samaj Party appears to be in serious trouble with so many senior leaders challenging the party supremo Mayawati. Never before so many veteran leaders of BSP came out in open and leveled serious allegations against their party head in recent times.

In a game of football, if someone commits a foul and breaks the rules of the game, the referee blows a whistle. The referee in this case is letting everyone know that something wrong has happened. In real life, a whistleblower is a person who reports a wrongdoing, including criminal activities. This term has gained traction especially in the context of public and private entities where ethical people inside these institutions have reported on the unethical/illegal activities they came to know. Additionally, activists have also joined in this just fight by uncovering information of various kinds and reporting them. Whistleblowing is one of the ways to check corruption in a system and push for better ethical conduct and compliance from all institutions.

Oil is the prime energy in the world. It accounts for 32 per cent of total primary energy supply in the world. Transport is the guzzler of oil energy. It consumes nearly 65-70 per cent of oil energy in the world.

Sri Lankan presidential elections this week could perhaps be one of the most keenly fought elections in the past two decades in the island country. Tamil Nadu is particularly watching the polls closely as the results could have an impact on the future of their Tamil brethren in Sri Lanka. No country has a greater stake than India in ending the Sri Lankan Tamil problems because of the echo reaching in Tamil Nadu. India has indeed been the most important external actor for many decades in the Sri Lankan ethnic issue because of its geo-strategic interests and internal political factors apart from its desire to find a permanent settlement to the ethnic conflict across the Palk Straits. However, despite converging strategic and economic and trade interests and appeals by Tamil Nadu-based political parties, New Delhi cannot apply too much pressure on Colombo on the issue.

The plunge in global oil prices since mid-2014 has become an unexpected windfall for oil-importing and deficit developing countries. It should help to re-build fiscal buffers for them, and India has already cut fuel subsidies and also left all oil products to market-determined prices.

Integration of South Asia has become a dream for some skeptics after the last SAARC summit at Kathmandu. They believe that SAARC’s march towards a common customs union and an economic union and then to a monetary union would continue to remain as a distant possibility for times to come. The SAARC Free Trade Area (SAFTA) already in operation has not met with much success as the official intra-regional trade remains around $22 billion a year, though trade through unofficial channels continue unabated. If the figures of unofficial trade is added up to the figures of official, the total may be somewhere around $60 billion. This shows the potentiality of the region.

Exit Nehru-Indira Gandhi era’s most pet and powerful Planning Commission. Enter NITI Aayog, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s economic development policy think tank. Set up by a union government resolution in March, 1950, the Planning Commission, under prime minister Nehru as its first chairman, was designed to promote a rapid rise in the standard of living of the people by efficient exploitation of the resources of the country, increasing production and offering opportunities to all for employment in the service of the community as its principal goal. It was assigned with the task of assessment of all national resources, augmenting deficient resources, formulating plans for the most effective and balanced utilisation of resources and prioritizing their implementation. It designed the national financial resource mobilization plan, followed by sectoral and state level allocations. It may be important to briefly know the history of the now-dead planning commission before assessing the need for NITI Aayog and its relevance to the present day situation under the BJP-led NDA rule.

Will 2015 – the year of hope the aspiring millions cling on to – deliver growth and jobs but without further burdening the masses already facing retail prices beyond affordable levels, no matter the statistical illusion of lowering of inflation indices the Modi Government unduly takes credit for?

The Oommen Chandy-led United Democratic Front (UDF) Government has developed an uncanny knack of courting controversies within the wink of an eye as it were.