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Pride of political and economic supremacy dominates the spirit of the developed or industrialized countries. Driven by this selfish interest for maintaining hegemony they have been successful in derailing multilateral development agendas, be it the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) or the Doha Development Agenda at WTO negotiations. The developing countries, on the other hand, have come forward to bail out the developed countries in their hour of crisis even though they were deeply impacted by their ill doings like the collapse of Lehman Brothers in US in August-September 2008 leading to global financial crisis which was aggravated by the Sovereign Debt Crisis in the Euro zone and Fukushima disaster in Japan.

New Delhi: Indian Navy hopes that the sunken submarine Sindhurakshak will once again be made operational.

India has higher stakes at the ongoing WTO Ministerial Conference at Bali (Dec 3-6) to safeguard its current system of support to farmers to be able to unroll the Food Security Act, whose implementation ahead of the 2014 elections has been mandated by the party’s supreme command. To fight a grim electoral battle ahead, food security with enlarged support to farmers and cheaper grain to a wider mass of people is a major plank in the Congress-led UPA’s poll strategy.

The Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress has emerged triumphant in the just-held municipal elections in West Bengal, and reduced the Left Front to insignificance. The TMC’s victory run, from the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, the 2011 Assembly elections and rural panchayat polls last July, has established it as Bengal’s pre-eminent party, ahead of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM).

Irrespective of whether Narendra Modi wins or loses, he must be given credit for having been able to emerge from the blind lane in which he found himself after the 2002 riots.

New Delhi: India has offered a financial contribution of $ 1 million for destruction of chemical weapons in Syria.

New Delhi: India is hopeful that the ambitious Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline will be operational by 2017-18.

Trade diplomacy is altogether a different ball game. In their quest to perpetuate their domination of the global economy, the developed countries have sought to rope in and subdue the developing and the least developed countries under a multi-lateral trade arrangement. After years of concerted efforts they succeeded in their effort through the Marrakesh Agreement, leading to the setting up of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 1995, replacing the earlier arrangement – General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).

There’s fresh misery for West Bengal on its already stressed employment front: over 10,000 state-based expat workers have been deported from Saudi Arabia, victims of the new Nitaqat regulations announced by the Kingdom.

A new opportunity has come to India to give a fresh dimension to the economic relations with Iran with the conclusion of the historic Nuclear Deal in Geneva last month. A thorough appraisal is now necessary to identify the areas which will be most beneficial at the moment for the growth of bilateral relations between the two countries and which can avoid the parameters of the United States sanctions still in force.