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With general elections in Bangladesh not far away, the timing of the Shahbag square secularist agitation in Bangladesh, regarded by some as the South Asian equivalent of Cairo’s Tahrir Square, has intrigued observers.

If government intentions were truly translated into action, today India, not China, would have been the world’s second largest economy. India’s current ranking is 10th. In 1950, India produced more steel, coal, iron ore, bricks and cement than China did. It generated more electricity than China. Its presence in the global export market was more prominent than China’s. It had surpluses on both trade and current accounts.

New Delhi: India and Romania agreed to have regular political dialogue, more frequent inter-governmental exchanges, heightened Parliamentary contacts and a more dynamic civil society interaction.

LUCKNOW: At a time when Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav is all set to complete one year in the office, the state is witnessing collapse of administration which resulted in sharp deterioration in the law and order situation.

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).