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President Barack Obama came to India at a fateful moment, when global power balances are changing, with a decline in the United States’ hegemony and the rise of China and India. The visit offered India a good opportunity to tell him what kind of world order it wants and how it would achieve it while retaining its foreign policy independence. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh squandered the opportunity. He allowed Mr Obama to seal military and business deals worth $20 billion to create 55,000 jobs in America, lecture India on isolating Iran and Myanmar, and sell illusions of grandeur, something the strutting Indian elite relishes.

The BJP has been unable to take advantage of the Congress’s shrinking “moral universe”, to use Sonia Gandhi’s words, because its own ethical world is contracting as a result of B.S. Yeddyurappa’s alleged involvement in dubious land deals. The BJP cannot take the moral high ground, therefore, at a time when its adversary is in deeper trouble than ever before. Not only has the Congress been hit by scams in its own party, but also by a huge one involving the second most important ally in the UPA, the DMK.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: With Tecom, the Dubai-based promoters of the Smart City project, refusing to budge from their stand, the ball is back in the court of the Left Democratic Government (LDF) in Kerala.

NEW DELHI: The Indian Labour Conference (ILC) meets at its 43rd Session in Delhi on November 23-24, 2010. The Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh will inaugurate the ILC session.

India is moving from recovery into a phase of “sustained high growth,” according to OECD Economic Outlook which puts GDP rise at 9.1 per cent, higher than the official estimate of 8.5 per cent in 2010/11. The higher growth is attributed to a rebound in agriculture and recovery strengthening in non-agriculture sector.

Behind every corrupt minister, bureaucrat or administrator, there are corruptors. And, there are deals that benefit all involved - the corruptor more than the corrupted. If the House of Tatas agreed to meet the alleged 'demand' of a former union civil aviation minister to get its proposal to set up a domestic air carrier in collaboration with Singapore Airlines (SIA) in the 1990s, Ratan Tata, the group patriarch, would have been by now on top of the world.

LUCKNOW: The political climate is hotting up in the state of Uttar Pradesh as all the leading political parties have geared themselves for the crucial assembly elections in 2012. The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo Mayawati announced at a meeting of her party workers that the BSP would fight alone in the 2012 polls without seeking adjustments with any political party and she called upon her supporters to get themselves fully prepared for the polls in terms of campaigning and organisation.

Is the Congress Party getting more assertive in dealing with its allies despite a razor thin majority at the centre? Is it looking for a regrouping? Look at the way it is behaving with the NCP, the Trinamool Congress and the DMK in recent months.

India is recognized as a mega-diverse country owing to its rich animal variety, which has evolved over the millennia across its ten bio-geographic zones. Due to increasing anthropogenic pressures, many species are under threat. It is also well known that the survival of the human beings depend on the survival of the eco-system in which we live. The question as to how can we save the ecosystem and the endangered species has been haunting us for a long time, and we finally came to this conclusion that 'saving the tiger' will amount to save the whole ecosystem with all its species. Now it is a well established wisdom - Saving the tiger means saving mankind.