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Coal mining issues are getting murkier increasingly in the country. Like the previous Congress led-government, the incumbent NDA too seems groping into holed-up challenges and cannot find much light beyond the tunnel. The opportunity is unique this time in the NDA government as the main party BJP is now armed with the single largest mandate, enough to institute its bold decisions, albeit through a consensus for the sake of the country’s unchallenged efforts towards energy security.

Is Trinamool Congress (TMC) Chief Mamata Banerjee about to join regional leaders like Mr. Mulayam Singh Yadav, Ms Mayawati, Ms Jayalalithaa or Mr, Lalu Prasad Yadav, with the CBI probing the Saradha chit fund scam ?

LUCKNOW: BSP decision to back independents has made the by-elections for 12 assembly seats and one Lok Sabha constituency more interesting.

Prime Minister Modi’s honeymoon with the public continues even as he completes 100 days in office. There are mixed reports about his performance as the opposition is looking for loopholes while his supporters are jubilant. But if one has to sum up his 100 days in office it could be described as “so far so good” as he has not committed any big blunder. He has kept some promises and some remain. His supporters point out that after all the mandate is for five years and 100 days are nothing to talk about.

During his tenure as Gujarat Chief Minister, Mr Narendra Modi‘s aim was to attract Japanese investment in Gujarat. He visited Japan twice before- 2007 and 2012. As Prime Minster of India, Mr Modi tries to re-write a new chapter on India- Japan relation with a paradigm shift from strategic economic relation to global partnership. He reiterated that India and Japan were the two oldest democracies in Asia and were among the three biggest economies. He asserted that 21st Century is to be decided by Asian countries and India and Japan bilateral relation would be the engine for 21st Century growth. Mr. Modi is one of the three twitters having largest following. Mr Shinzo Abe follows. The commentators hailed Modi as “India Abe”.

Most human cultures in the subcontinent and around the world consider marriage (or socially-sanctioned variants of the concept) to be the purest expression of human love in the form of permanent coupling between individuals. Of course, now there are fringe creatures born out of contemporary urban rootlessness that scoff at such societies and celebrate ‘alternative’ and ‘radical’ modes of ‘liberated’ companionship. Whether it is the idea of love as espoused by society or its self-styled ‘radical’ and voluntary outcastes, it does not run blind, in most cases. If one looks at marriage, the only socially sanctioned coupling institution with permanence as an avowed goal, it will be clear that religion, class, caste, ethnicity, language or a combination of these factors matter in most instances. Some may dislike this state of affairs for whatever private preferences, but this is how it is for society-at-large. The coupling patterns of the so-called rebels and radicals also bear out the same private prejudices, their shrill public radicalism notwithstanding. White men and women born in Christian families, whose lives, ideals and philosophies inspire certain brown urban yuppies, mostly marry white people from Christian families.

As the Modi Government is set to unveil the five-year foreign trade policy (2014-19) soon, all eyes are fixated on what would be the broad contours and contents of it, particularly in the context of India’s dominant part in the defeat of the trade facilitation policy (TFP) piloted by the World Trade Organization (WTO). India played a crucial role in the Bali Ministerial in agreeing to the launch of the TFP as its concerns over food security issues had been taken on board by giving it the reprieve till a permanent solution to the latter is hammered out in four years time from 2013. But the BJP-led NDA government that came to power in May 2014 did not find any merit in the short-term solution but instead sought a swift settling of the food security issue before it consented to ratify the TFP. Hence the WTO could not open the trade facilitation policy for ratification on the deadline of July 31, 2014 owing to New Delhi’s dudgeon on immediate permanent solution to food security since any decision in the WTO is arrived at by consensus.

It is Russian tit for Western tat. Vladimir Putin is clearly the winner in the first round of what seems to resemble like the US-USSR cold war days. The Russian president’s combative response to the Western sanction against the country for its role in the Ukraine separatist movement is sending shivers through both the EU members and North America. Putin has warned US President Barak Obama not to mess up with nuclear-armed Russia, probably in a bid to refresh his memory of the spine-chilling Khruschev-Kennedy nuclear stand-off. In a further snub to Washington, U.S. intelligence leaker Edward Snowden has been granted a three-year residence permit in Russia. Putin said if Russia at all wanted it could take over Ukraine in a fortnight.

Within weeks of winning the Lok Sabha elections with a surprisingly large margin, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance has suffered major setbacks in Assembly byelections in four states. Of the 18 seats for which elections were held—10 seats in Bihar, three each in Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka, and two in Punjab—the NDA won only 8, down from its victory in 14 Assembly segments earlier. A majority, 10 seats, went to the Congress and its allies.

BHOPAL: While the results of the bye-polls in three assembly constituencies in Madhya Pradesh came as a setback to the Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan, his inclusion in the BJP Parliamentary Board has boosted his image as he has been placed in the company of select party stalwarts of the national level.