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India’s GDP grew by 4.6 per cent in the first half of fiscal 2014, with a projected 5 per cent for the full year based on whatever strength derived from agriculture, thanks to a good monsoon, and a pick-up in segments of infrastructure like electricity generation and construction as well as exports.

Did you ever worry about banks not getting back their money given out in loans? Not possibly. But the Reserve Bank of India is. In its latest report on trends in Indian banking, RBI has noted how fast the loan losses of Indian public sector banks are rising. There are two aspects: one is the amount of bad loans (that is, loans against which banks are not getting interest or repayment of dues for three quarters). The second aspect is the trends, that is, whether bad loans are rising or falling.

Never before a session of Parliament was so short as the winter session commencing on December 5. It is slated to last for barely two weeks. Normally, Winter and Monsoon sessions last for full one month or even more. There is no plausible reason for cutting short the span of coming winter session. One reason may be that since Parliament is disrupted session after session why waste public money on holding long sessions. The way parliament is disrupted is unfortunate indeed.

New Delhi: India’s growing engagement with Japan as one of the strategic country in its Look East Policy is evident. Japan was the focus country at the just concluded week long 44th International Film Festival India-2013 in Goa. Simultaneously it was also the focus country at the 33rd India International Trade Fair which concluded here on November 27.

New Delhi: India, recognizing the work of one of its major border force, has issued a postage stamp on the 50th anniversary of its raising day.

New Delhi: The Border Security Force (BSF) has asked the government to raise 41 new battalions for guarding India’s border with Myanmar. It has also asked for creation of 4 frontier points and 12 sectors along the India-Myanmar border.

Elections to the 601-member Constituent Assembly for framing a new federal constitution for Nepal was held on November 19. The results are now out for the 240 seats which are directly elected by the people under the First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) system. Another 335 seats will be filled up through the proportional representation system, while 26 members will be nominated by the Cabinet.

Bank robbery always makes big news. But, not when it is craftily conducted by clever corporates. Corporate robbery of banks even carries a fashionable nametag called ‘non-performing asset’. It refers to loans that have gone sour and are not recoverable. Banks simply write them off. Unlike other categories of bank thieves who, if caught, face prosecution under a host of sections and sub-sections of the Indian Penal Code, big-time corporate bank robbers mostly go scot-free although several of them are even known to be habitual loan defaulters.

New Delhi: India will continue with its work of development of the Chabahar port in Iran as the said project does not come under the purview of the sanctions imposed by the Western powers against that country.

India was as much shocked as the rest of the world when the news of the tragic assassination of the US President John F Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963. Kennedy’s fiftieth death anniversary was recently celebrated with the top leadership of the Democrats including President Obama and former President Clinton and his wife Hillary present on the occasion. There are many who believe that had Kennedy lived longer, the Indo-US relations would have bloomed and taken a different direction. During his brief tenure, besides food aid, there were several US projects that emerged including the Tarapur plant, Kanpur IIT and Nagarjuna Sagar project in Andhra Pradesh.