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Whoever may have engineered the exposure of Mumbai's high-rise Adarsh Co-operative Society scandal with whatever real intent behind, the issue has once again brought to the fore the politician-bureaucrat-servicemen nexus which has perpetuated public assets grab cheaply ever since early sixties. The Kargil war widows association, which fronted the land grab at Colaba in South Mumbai, one of the world's most expensive real estate sites, for politicians, bureaucrats, businessmen and living generals, is a glaring example of this.

Unlike in the past, the G20 meet of the finance ministers in Seoul has proved to be more productive than most pundits had anticipated. Before the meeting, the US had proposed some quantitative restrictions on the trade surplus countries should be allowed to run. Tentatively, this has been pegged at about 4% of GDP. This also implied certain norms for intervention in the currency markets to manage the exchange rates. It was feared that China would reject it out of court. But surprisingly, the proposal seems to have been somewhat tacitly agreed to by two most important players, United States who mooted it. And China, for whom this salvo was primarily meant, seems to have not disagreed with the formulation.

New Delhi, Nov 4 : Political and economic analysts are eagerly awaiting the outcome of the visit of the US President, Barack Obama to India. But Obama is not visiting India alone. He will be visiting Indonesia, South Korea and Japan as well.

AICC general secretary Rahul Gandhi might not have expected his handpicked Maharashtra chief minister Ashok Chavan to fail so soon or that he may have to look for a replacement. After all Chavan had the full backing of the centre. The young chief minister has landed himself into a land scam, which is slowly blowing into a big political crisis involving three chief ministers - Narayan Rane, Vilasrao Deshmukh and Sushil Kumar Shinde. It has taken a toll of the current chief minister as Chavan has tendered resignation and has a grace period until the visit of the U.S. President Obama on November 6 to Mumbai. How could the Congress leadership afford to have an embarrassing situation with a hurriedly elected new chief minister receive the visiting president? That is why Chavan's resignation has been kept in abeyance. The fact that Chavan was asked to resign shows that he has earned the displeasure of the high command.

New Delhi, Nov 3 : India has decided to reopen its diplomatic mission in Malawi as the two countries agreed to negotiate an Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement and a Treaty on Avoidance of Double Taxation.

Republicans have regained control of US House of Representatives, inflicting a crushing defeat on Democrats, and imperiling President Barack Obama's agenda of rescuing and rebuilding a new American economy, in the November 2 Congressional midterm elections 2010. Democrats just managed to hold on to their majority in the 100-member Senate though losing heavily to Republicans in the key chamber. Democrats also suffered losses in the race for Governorships.

There is need to review the policy on the development of the petroleum sector, indeed the entire energy sector of the Indian economy. It is totally misleading and really mischievous to suggest, as is done by some in the UPA-II government and the media that marginal additions to the oil and gas resources of India by the relatively small foreign oil companies working in collaboration arrangements with Oil and Natural Gas Commission of India or domestic private oil exploration companies justifies the opening of the oil - gas sector in India for international oil companies. On the contrary, indigenous enterprise, public and private, separately and in collaboration can be the only dependable basis for progress in this strategic sector.

The Reserve Bank of India, in its Second Quarter Review of monetary Policy in 2010-11 sees more risks ahead, both from persistent food price inflation with its likely spread across other prices as well as from any “quantitative easing” in advanced economies to stimulate demand, which could lead to rise in global commodity prices and intensification of capital flows into fast-growing emerging economies.

New Delhi: The ruling Congress party at the Centre vowed to respect the concerns for environment and the tribals while advancing its development agenda.

After months of deliberation, the National Advisory Council (NAC) has recommended a National Food Security Bill, which scales down the public's legal entitlements to basic foodgrains to levels lower than envisaged earlier. The NAC has thus missed a historic opportunity to launch a concerted effort to abolish hunger through a universal public distribution system (PDS)—which creates equal entitlements for all citizens to reasonably subsidised foodgrains.