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KOLKATA: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s two-day visit to Nepal (Aug. 5-6) was an overture that was long overdue on India’s part. He was the first Indian PM to visit the neighbouring country in seventeen years. Last month, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj visited Nepal and chaired a meeting of the India-Nepal Joint Commission, held in twenty-three years. It shows the extent of neglect that the Manmohan Singh Government had shown to this country.

China +1 strategy in FDI is gaining momentum in South East Asian countries. With the depletion of low cost regime in China and sagging export opportunities in the west, China is turning into an investment risk country for the foreign investors. Instead of closing down their operations in China, the foreign investors are contemplating to invest in other South East Asian countries for their expansion program. It ensures them that this investment will insulate their investment in China.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Kerala unit of the Indian National Trade Union Congress (INTUC) has upped the ante against Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy by lodging a complaint against him with the Congress High Command.

India is again set to show the way to the developed countries their right place in international negotiations as it recently did in Geneva by not approving the protocol of amendment proposed by the 9th ministerial conference in Bali for enshrining the Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) into the WTO Marrakesh Agreement till its concerns over food security are met. This time the venue will be Lima in Peru where the battle lines are being drawn between developing and developed nations over the issue of halting climate change in the first half of December, this year.

Having known Natwar Singh for over three decades and covering the Congress party as a journalist for almost the same period, I can vouch what he has written in his autobiography—One Life is not Enough—is absolutely correct and there is no exaggeration. The Congress, unfortunately, never defends its leaders, except the top one, when they run into trouble and leaves them to fend for themselves. So was the case with P V Narasimha Rao and, Natwar Singh was no exception when he got embroiled in Oil-for-Food scandal. The then AICC general secretary, Ambika Soni, had been quoting as saying “as far as individuals (reference was to Natwar) were concerned, they were competent to defend themselves” and the Congress party had nothing to do with the scandal.

BHOPAL: Madhya Pradesh is one of the states setting record in food grain production. Agricultural growth has become an USP of development sector for the state. Some of the districts, which used to have very low productivity, are now contributing significantly in the agricultural development of the state. Umaria is one such district, where agriculture was not counted as profitable source of livelihood earlier, but record production growth of paddy in the district during last year has resulted in the promotion of economic growth of the district and contributed significantly to the agricultural development of the state.

How did you come to be the way you are is one of your most important aspects. You may be a person, a culture, an institution or a company. Whether you like it or not, in the subcontinent, people are inquisitive about origins. While this line of inquiry may appear ‘backward’ to the modern-urban types, this is one of the more dependable ways in which humans have always tried to know what lies beneath public pretension – ‘castelessness’ of high-caste Hindus is a useful example.

It was a coincidence that Modi was there in Nepal, when North Bihar was facing a major flood threat from Kosi. Bhote Kosi, a tributary of Kosi had been blocked by a landslide, which had taken place in Nepal, accumulating a lot of water after the blockage. With Nepal government contemplating blasts to remove the block, people of Kosi belt in Bihar and the Manjhi regime were in great distress. Six years ago in 2008, Kusaha dam on Kosi broke in Nepal, and people of Bihar faced the most disastrous flood in the history of independent India. A tragedy of almost the same scale was hanging over Bihar this time, too, though, the government was trying to minimise the damage by making elaborate arrangement in advance by opening up the relief camps and evacuating, in some cases forcibly, people in high risk areas.

LUCKNOW: Poor performance of Samajwadi Party in 2014 Lok Sabha polls has forced a desperate Mulayam Singh Yadav to join hands with his estranged lieutenant Amar Singh. After being without the man for four years, Mulayam Singh has realised he needs a person of Amar Singh’s background for networking with Modi government and the corporate sector.

What is the politics behind the Insurance bill? It is stuck in Rajya Sabha more for political reasons than for its merits. There is no doubt that in most economic policies, the Congress and the BJP were on the same page or else the reform process could not have moved forward in the past two decades. The Insurance bill has become the casualty because of the politics being played by the political parties, particularly the Congress and the BJP. When the bill was introduced in 2002 by the Vajpayee government, the Congress, which was in the opposition, opposed it. When the Manmohan Singh government brought it in 2008 raising the foreign investment cap from 26 per cent to 49 per cent, the BJP, sitting in the opposition opposed it. Politically it was expedient to oppose it for both. Now it is the turn of the Congress again when the BJP has brought the bill raising the FDI cap to 49 per cent.