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New Delhi: After strengthening trade bonds with ASEAN and Pacific countries, India has sought to boost economic relations with the nations in the Indian Ocean rim.

It will take years to roll back the physical, psychological, social, economic and ecological damage wrought by the terrible floods in Uttarakhand, which killed more than 1,000 people. The deeper causes of this epic tragedy were not natural, but manmade. They ensured that cloudbursts and heavy rainfall, which routinely occur in Uttarakhand’s upper hills, turned into a catastrophe.

BHOPAL: Rising factionalism is causing serious concern in both the Madhya Pradesh Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress – the two main claimants for power in the state.

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee has finally met her match in the state’s election commissioner, Meera Pandey. The doughty IAS offer has taken on the bullying politician in a legal battle of nerves in which the former has finally emerged victorious. This is not only Mamata’s first setback after two years of success in browbeating her opponents into silence since coming to power, it also holds out disquieting possibilities for her.

New Delhi: After down playing US snooping of phone logs and internet data and denying asylum to Edward Snowden, India launched its first National Cyber Security Policy to protect its own establishments from possible cyber attacks.

Jammu and Kashmir is again in the media headlines for two reasons: Controversy over the demand for revocation of Article 370; and, stepped-up infiltrations and escalated terror violence by Pakistan-based terrorists.

Engulfed by high import of gold and oil, along with decline in invisibles, current account deficit (CAD) made a historical jump, causing a paranoia for debt trap in the imminent future – reminiscence of 1991 crisis. In 2012-13, CAD increased to 4.8 percent of GDP. Caught in the ambivalence of external commercial borrowing, which made a whopping increase by 21.2 percent, and the total FDI plunging by 21 percent, less rooms are left to set off the alarming CAD.

July has opened on a grim note for the Indian economy in 2013-14, after the setbacks of the first quarter (April-June) with a slower growth recovery, a sharper depreciation of the rupee and some outflows of debt and equity capital underlining weakened investor confidence. Notwithstanding timely onset of monsoon, the mid-2013 outlook is one of depressing perspectives, both in regard to inflation at home as well as management on external account with the rise in short-term liabilities.

New Delhi: India is likely to discuss matters relating to its presence in the South China Sea, need for peace and stability in Afghanistan and the recent developments in North Korea with the ASEAN members as well as with the East Asian and the Pacific countries.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: An essential prerequisite for success in politics is an exquisite sense of timing. The hallmark of a successful politician is the unerring ability to seize the moment and retain the moral high ground.