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With global recovery from the four-year old financial crisis still fragile and uncertain, and the environment volatile, the World Bank has urged developing countries to “rebuild buffers and pursue cautious macro-economic policies” over the next few years. Its Global Economic Prospects (GEP) Report on January 15, projects India’s growth at 5.1 per cent in current fiscal ending March, and 6.1 percent in fiscal 2014 and 6.8 percent in 2015.

One month on, public outrage at the gang rape and barbaric brutalisation of a 23-year-old physiotherapy student in Delhi, causing her death, refuses to die down. Among the factors driving it are the recent crassly insensitive and misogynist comments on it, and the deplorable deception practised by the Delhi government. It moved her against sound judgment to Singapore in collusion with a moneymaking corporate group with no experience of treating grave injuries with multiple organ failure and septicaemia, and stealthily flew home her dead body and had it secretly cremated.

An insight into how politics is conducted nowadays is available from West Bengal’s seamless transition from the “cold horror” of the Nandigram incident, in the words of the then governor, Gopal Krishna Gandhi, to the “goondaism” of the present period, to quote the present occupant of Raj Bhavan, M.K. Narayanan.

Will the past few years’ relative stability in the Jammu and Kashmir situation prove lasting or will the state again get destabilised, even if partially, in the foreseeable future? An answer to the question can be attempted by analysing the possible implications of the happenings that have lately been taking place in the state. First, the cross LoC infiltrations.

Have you ever felt that there are too few banks around for meeting the banking requirements? Most people will not have. But policy makers, including the Reserve Bank of India, think otherwise. Hence, there is a move afoot to create more banks in India and a new banking licence policy will be announced by the central bank in a couple of weeks.

Controversies in the literary world always gladden me and the past year had doled out quite a handful of them as a way to remind us that our writers, poets, novelists, playwrights, memoirists and literary journalists still put their reputations at stake in defence of the written word, or to challenge long-held beliefs. Literary spats are actually heady exchange of ideas, albeit in a ferociously public and theatrical manner, much to the consternation of some people, while raging delight for the others.

NEW DELHI: The 45th Session of the Standing Labour Committee (SLC), held in Delhi, on January 3, 2013, set the Agenda for the Indian Labour Conference (ILC) – the apex labour tripartite in the country.

The border clash in which two Indian soldiers were killed could not have come at a worse time when a Indo-Pak peace initiative was making steady progress in Lahore. As the SAFMA (South Asian Free Media Association) conference was pledging opening borders, opening minds, came the report of the clash. Ironically, viewed from Pakistan side, one gets the impression, as if, the Indian side was at fault, while seen from the Indian side, it appears, the fault was that of Pakistani troops. The people in general were thoroughly confused. Neither Islamabad nor New Delhi want to escalate the tension and keen to defuse the volatile situation by back channel diplomacy. It is a welcome sign.