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The media has all but crowned the Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi as the NDA’s Prime Ministerial candidate for the Lok Sabha poll 2014. Modi also did not hide his ambitions and virtually declared himself as the candidate at the BJP National Council meet in the capital last weekend.

New Delhi: Removing speculations, India clarified that the visit of the Pakistan Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf will remain solely “a private visit”. There will be no meeting with the Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, unlike the private visit of the Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari in April which was converted into discussions with the Indian Prime Minister.

As a Bengali, being a witness to the Shahbag protests of Dhaka was an experience of a lifetime. The protests started when one of the war criminals of 1971, a Bengali killer-collaborator called Kader Mollah, was handed down a life sentence. The initial protest organisers, sort of an informal alliance between a network of bloggers and certain secular and left student organisations, snowballed into a continuous protest against the verdict. People of from many walks of life, especially women and youth, joined in.

KOLKATA: Confounding all prophecies of political Cassandras, the CPI-M has stormed back to power in Tripura for the fifth time in a row. The Congress is stunned. It had taken its victory and capture of the red citadel as a foregone conclusion long before the polling. Even when the counting started on February 28 morning and early counting trends showed the CPI-M was decisively leading in most of the constituencies, Congress spokespersons insisted these were the indications from the first one or two rounds of counting only and the trend would be reversed as counting progressed. No such miracle happened.

Killing of a Deputy Superintendent of Police in Kunda in Pratapgarh district of Uttar Pradesh may snowball the state into a major crisis, if it is not handled properly by Akhilesh government. The killing is unfortunate and it once again shows the poor law and order situation prevailing in the most populous state of the country. The state witnessed a spate of communal riots after the swearing in of the government under the youthful Akhilesh Yadav.

MANILA, PHILIPPINES – Five countries of South Asia – Bangladesh, Bhutan, the Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka - could slash greenhouse gas emissions by a fifth by 2020 at little long-term cost by introducing a variety of clean technologies, according to a new study from the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

India’s neighbourhood is in great turmoil, but New Delhi seems unable to fashion a coherent, balanced, mature and self-confident response to it. In particular, India has dealt with Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Maldives, Myanmar and Nepal in confused and indecisive, if not wholly inept, ways. This has eroded India’s influence and legitimacy in the “Gujral Doctrine” countries, comprising South Asia without Pakistan, with whom India pledged to establish close relations by “going the extra mile” without demanding reciprocity.

It is ironic that the chief minister who was held responsible for the BJP’s 2004 defeat by Atal Behari Vajpayee is now being presented as the party’s prime ministerial candidate in 2014.

MANILA, PHILIPPINES – Asia has become increasingly integrated over the past decade, led by growing trade and tourism and, most recently, as the region faced down the global financial crisis and subsequent eurozone crisis, according to a new integration index published in the Asian Development Bank’s (ADB) latest Asian Economic Integration Monitor.

New Delhi: India and Kazakhstan agreed to explore possibilities of creating direct trade and energy corridors between the two countries. Both the countries also agreed to enhance air connectivity with airlines from Kazakhstan and India soon having up to 14 flights a week to destinations in each of our countries.