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A poll survey has visualized if the Lok Sabha elections are held now, the NDA will form the government, edging out the ruling UPA. There are clear indications that elections will not be held now or anytime before the scheduled time that is May, 2014. Therefore, the whole exercise of hazarding guess is infructuous. What is more important is a series of coming elections in the states in 2013. The outcome of these electionS will set the tone for the Lok Sabha poll.

Over three decades ago, Mexico’s powerful former economic and foreign affairs minister Julius Eduardo Navarette, a champion of the non-alignment movement (NAM), South-South dialogue and friend of then Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, said after the famous Cancun Conference that the big brother United States, its neighbour and biggest trading partner, was practically robbing Mexican businessmen of millions of dollars in tricky price and delivery pacts and trade law jargons as few Mexicans understood English well.

The union railway minister was sacked not a long while back. Unfortunately, we will soon get another railway minister. But then, do we really need a railway minister? It is time that the issue is examined and acted upon.

When the West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee entered the Writer’s Building in Kolkata two years ago, there were great expectations that she might use a magic wand to bring the state back to its old glory. There was hope that the long years of recession under the Left Front government would come to an end with the installation of a new government. Has Mamata squandered the enormous goodwill with which she snatched power in 2011?

New Delhi: India and Australia agreed to develop and strengthen cooperation in skills training in the farm sector.

New Delhi: The Afghan President Hamid Karzai left for Kabul on Wednesday with the assurance that India would do all its best to help in maintaining peace and security in Afghanistan and would remain committed to the development of the war ravaged country.

The Indian family’s universal acclaim as a holder of sacred values, as a carrier and preserver of traditions, and as the champion of ancient and prehistoric customs, has been touted as a lesson to commerce-driven trade relationships that have now replaced the tender family bonds of capitalist nations like United States. Or, is it at all so easy and simplistic?

The main entrance of the Reserve Bank of India’s office on Parliament Street in New Delhi is guarded by two massive figures of Yaksha and Yashini, the mythical figures who guard the immense divine wealth. The larger-than-life statutes in sandstone are the works of the famous sculptor Ramkinkar Beij. As a sculptor, Ramkinkar has given his creation a look of determination. The irony with Yaksha is that for eternity he is only guarding the wealth; he can never enjoy any of it.

Money, wine, women, film stars, politicians, businessmen, industrialists, policemen, bureaucrats, money launderers, bookies, gamblers, match fixers, prostitutes and honey traps, underworld dons, crazy fan following and also some cricket under the glare of millions of wasteful watts of electric light when vast parts of the country reel under power cuts! To increasing number of Indians, the cricket’s T-20 Indian Premier League (IPL) championship extravaganza is, to a large extent, a combination of all these and more! It is like a popular Bollywood masala film. It is also the last and most expensive of sporting entertainments in the country.

Strange as it may seem, it is not always difficult to pinpoint the moment when a politician’s downfall begins. For instance, in Atal Behari Vajpayee’s case, it was the time when he allowed himself to be persuaded by LK Advani, Pramod Mahajan, Arun Jaitley and others not to sack Narendra Modi after the 2002 Gujarat riots. The result of this misjudgment was the BJP’s defeat in the general election two years later, as Vajpayee himself acknowledged.