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For the first time, the visit of an Indian Prime Minster to Japan to strengthen bilateral relation had a rider of third country and that was China. Interestingly, Japan and China are bogged down by their historical political rivalries. After China emerged the biggest trading partner of India and Japan became the second biggest investor in India, both countries have become important economic allies.

Enthused by polls survey that party could do well in the state, the BJP has started preparations for 2014 Lok Sabha polls in Uttar Pradesh.

Why should a going government be in such a tearing hurry to push a controversial food security act over the head of Parliament by promulgating an ordinance? It is a serious matter concerning the stomachs of 800 million Indians. The bill must be debated in threadbare in the both houses or in a joint session of Parliament before adopting it. Or, else, the President should apply his power to reject and send back the ordinance proposal to the government. The election-bound Congress-led UPA government’s floor majority is suspect.

KOLKATA: While the ruling Trinamool Congress(TMC) duly clinched its anticipated win in Howrah Lok Sabha by- election , results of which were announced on June 5, the CPI(M) even in defeat had more cause to cheer--- for the first time since 2009 !

It was the BJP’s national executive meeting in Goa which gave a new lease of life to the Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi in 2002, when the BJP leader LK Advani and the party backed him to the full after the Godhara riots, while the then Prime Minister Vajpayee was critical of the non-action by the Gujarat government in containing the riots.

The debate around Maoist insurgency in India is stuck within two fundamentally opposite views. One view is that this insurgency is simply a law and order issue and should be dealt by force alone and the other view propounds that it’s more of a social and political problem arising out of decade-long alienation and oppression of tribal people.

BHOPAL: Both the ruling BJP and the main opposition Congress, recently, held marathon meetings to chalk out their respective strategies for the Vidhan Sabha elections in Madhya Pradesh, which are due in the month of November this year. While BJP held its meeting in Gwalior, Congress chose Bhopal as the venue of its conclave. While Congress succeeded in sending a positive message, BJP could not do so. Reports of the two meetings, which appeared in the newspapers, summed up the mood prevailing there.

The 17th century Dutch philosopher, Hugo Grotius, whose pioneering work on laws of war and peace laid the foundation of the modern international law, likened diplomacy to a long-distance marathon run and war to a 100-yard dash. Patience is key to good diplomacy which Grotius characterized with the creation of a win-win situation for parties involved. Belligerence is the product of impatience, jealousy, rivalry and quest for supremacy. War starts when diplomacy fails.

Perhaps no other country has as great and complex a maze of laws and rules that give arbitrary or unlimited powers to the state as India. And no other state has abused them as comprehensively as has India to censor free expression, manipulate opinion, curb dissent, criminalise protest, and harshly victimise people—in order to impose manifestly harmful decisions on them. The maze includes scores of new laws (200, according to one estimate), in addition to the Indian Penal Code, Criminal Procedure Code and Indian Police Act, inherited from the colonial era.

The euphoria of social activism has evaporated. That it lacked staying power was evident early enough when Anna Hazare’s decision to shift his venue of protest from Delhi to Mumbai in December, 2011, exposed the movement’s fragility. In contrast to the surging crowds, which attended Anna’s meetings in the national capital during the summer of that year, large empty spaces were visible in Mumbai’s Bandra-Kurla complex ground when Anna held his meeting.