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New Delhi: The three-day Defexpo India is slated to kick off on Thursday without the participation of AgustaWestland and its parent company Finmeccanica, even though there would be presence of 368 foreign companies.

When Jawaharlal arrived in a Kashmiri Brahmin family of Allahabad on 14th November, the seed of Children’s Day was born in this brown land. For some curious reason, decades of publicly money funded propaganda has ensured that people are fed stories about unverifiable heartwarming anecdotes about child welfare priorities of the Indian Union’s first Prime Minister, father of the Union’s fourth Prime Minister and grandfather of a subsequent one. What is verifiable though is that the regime of the great do-gooder of children also ruled for long years over the highest number of hungry, starving children among United Nations member states. But then, Henry Kissinger also won a Nobel peace prize.

The year 2014 promises to bring good opportunities to India in giving a big push to the economic relations between India and the West Asian nations. The positive developments in solving the political problems in Iran, Iraq and Syria as also the consolidation of the Sisi regime in Egypt signal the advancement of the process of democratic change in the region and it is a good omen for India. India has a long standing good political and economic relations with the West Asian nations and there are indications that this will be further bolstered in the coming period.

If political alliance is not only about a combination of numbers but also their traits, the next Lok Sabha may witness the emergence of a new front led by regional powers that may choose to stay together to provide greater and more meaningful autonomy to states for economic development and social justice and redefine the country’s federal structure. As top regional political satraps are engaged in pre-poll permutations and combinations, the possibility of emergence of a new alternative to the two belligerent national parties – Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – as a new ruling political front at the Centre despite sharp differences among some of the constituents at local or state levels.

A month after storming to power in Delhi following a spectacular electoral debut, the Aam Aadmi Party has tarnished its image by taking three false steps. First, its law minister Somnath Bharti and women and child welfare minister Rakhi Birla indulged in obnoxious vigilantism. Second, AAP’s top leadership, including Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, defended their conduct and even commended Mr Bharti’s actions.

In a keynote speech to the Jaipur literary festival, Amartya Sen said something which he might not have done some years ago. ‘I want to see a party’, he said, ‘that is pro-market and pro-business to come to power and doesn’t prioritize one religion over another’.

Indian diplomacy on China has failed squarely as it has not been able to assert the Johnson Line in the northern sector and the McMahon Line in the eastern sector, drawn by the colonial rulers as India’s boundary line. This is despite the fact that India’s official map has recognised these lines since Independence.

NEW DELHI: The stand of the US state department that the Indian diplomat Devyani Khobragade presently does not enjoy immunity from prosecution for the “crimes charged in the indictment” exposes the double standard of the US Government in applying its laws, according to the diplomatic sources. Sources say that a French diplomat, charged for much graver crimes, was allowed to leave USA and then after a gap, returned again as the consul general in San Francisco.

KOLKATA: There has been an unusual lull in Bangladesh after the elections and after Sheikh Hasina was sworn in as Prime Minister for the second time in succession. The BNP-Jamaat led Opposition, which had boycotted the 5 January, threatened not to recognise the new Government as a legitimate one and to carry on their agitation till fresh elections were held. Hasina’s response was that the elections were perfectly valid and her government would last its full term of five years.

The DMK Patriarch, 90-year old Mr M Karunanidhi, is in agony as the battle for succession within the family reaches a new pitch, before he can devise a credible poll strategy with trusted Dravidian satellites, to arrest a galloping race by Ms. Jayalalithaa’s AIADMK for capturing all the 40 seats of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry in Lok Sabha.