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Even as Dr Raghuram Rajan tries to battle inflation, a ‘destructive disease’ as he calls it, and favours a redefined monetary policy targeting on consumer price inflation, as part of a host of radical financial sector reforms on his plate, he finds a Government not only questioning his premise but also becoming further enfeebled to act on what needs to be done for macro-economic stability. This is, to a large extent, due to unstable political conditions in the run-up to the critical May elections.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: It is a double whammy for the Kerala CPI(M), which has suffered a severe setback with the trial court verdict in the TP Chandrashekharan murder case.

Arvind Kejriwal made the first mistake in his four-week long career as Delhi’s Chief Minister too early and the result was a sudden brake to rising graph of his popularity. He took up an absolutely wrong cause and, worse still, to press unreasonable demands, he went on an uncalled for Dharna just outside Parliament house, a high security zone. The protest saw four metro stationed closed down, traffic jams and colossal chaos that inconvenienced lakhs of people from office-goers to ordinary commuters.

New Delhi: Apart from the display of India's military might, the visiting Japanese Prime Minister Shizo Abe, who is the Chief Guest at the Republic Day Parade, will witness 18 tableaux of various states, union territories and central government ministries/departments passing by him depicting India's varied cultural diversity, freedom struggle, way of life, developments in science and technology and economic strength.

If the recommendations of the Urjit Patel Committee on monetary policy-making are adopted in full, the governor of the Reserve Bank of India, and the members of the freshly recommended monetary policy committee, might have to face repeated public embarrassment.

The tax-free PSU bond issue season is, thankfully, coming to a close. The government is unlikely to push any more bond issue, for now. The bonds, meant for infrastructure project funding by large PSUs, proved to be a success to the great relief of both the issuers and the government although they clashed to a good measure most of the commercial banks’ year-end plans to mop up fixed deposits to meet the usual additional busy season fund demands from industry, agriculture and services sectors.

When AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal was sworn in as Delhi chief minister, a surge of excitement shot through the country, which witnessed a new chapter in Indian politics. Huge expectations were raised by the success of the Party, which has succeeded in resonating the anger of people. Its votes come from both the middle class and the poor who were fed up with the governance deficit. But within a month it has lost some of its sheen already and unless AAP can transform itself into a political party with vision and a long-term philosophy it will lose the aura further.

New Delhi : Just a few days before the slated visit of the Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe to this country, India and Japan signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for strengthening cooperation in the field of tourism.

For the West Bengali bhadralok (or whatever remains of them), East Bengal continues to represent vastly different things to different people: a Muslim-majority country now called Bangladesh, an audacious dream of ethnic pride and secularism, a land vaguely culturally similar but distant in imagination, some of their forefather’s homeland, the place where cyclones aimed at West Bengal finally end up, a previous hub of ISI activity, the place of origin of the wondrous Ilish fish, among others. The list goes on.

Thirty six hours agitation by Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has ended without yielding any results, yet the CM is boasting of the victory of the people of Delhi. He had announced the agitation under the false perception that under his thread the Home Ministry of Union government would at least transfer the police officers involved in wrangling with the AAP Ministers. After that he would have launched a movement to make Delhi Police subordinate to his government. Home Ministry of the Union Government was aware that it could not satisfy Kejriwal by accepting his demands of transfer of the police personnel.