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The Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress has emerged triumphant in the just-held municipal elections in West Bengal, and reduced the Left Front to insignificance. The TMC’s victory run, from the 2009 Lok Sabha elections, the 2011 Assembly elections and rural panchayat polls last July, has established it as Bengal’s pre-eminent party, ahead of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM).

Irrespective of whether Narendra Modi wins or loses, he must be given credit for having been able to emerge from the blind lane in which he found himself after the 2002 riots.

New Delhi: India has offered a financial contribution of $ 1 million for destruction of chemical weapons in Syria.

New Delhi: India is hopeful that the ambitious Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline will be operational by 2017-18.

Trade diplomacy is altogether a different ball game. In their quest to perpetuate their domination of the global economy, the developed countries have sought to rope in and subdue the developing and the least developed countries under a multi-lateral trade arrangement. After years of concerted efforts they succeeded in their effort through the Marrakesh Agreement, leading to the setting up of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 1995, replacing the earlier arrangement – General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).

There’s fresh misery for West Bengal on its already stressed employment front: over 10,000 state-based expat workers have been deported from Saudi Arabia, victims of the new Nitaqat regulations announced by the Kingdom.

A new opportunity has come to India to give a fresh dimension to the economic relations with Iran with the conclusion of the historic Nuclear Deal in Geneva last month. A thorough appraisal is now necessary to identify the areas which will be most beneficial at the moment for the growth of bilateral relations between the two countries and which can avoid the parameters of the United States sanctions still in force.

India’s GDP grew by 4.6 per cent in the first half of fiscal 2014, with a projected 5 per cent for the full year based on whatever strength derived from agriculture, thanks to a good monsoon, and a pick-up in segments of infrastructure like electricity generation and construction as well as exports.

Did you ever worry about banks not getting back their money given out in loans? Not possibly. But the Reserve Bank of India is. In its latest report on trends in Indian banking, RBI has noted how fast the loan losses of Indian public sector banks are rising. There are two aspects: one is the amount of bad loans (that is, loans against which banks are not getting interest or repayment of dues for three quarters). The second aspect is the trends, that is, whether bad loans are rising or falling.

Never before a session of Parliament was so short as the winter session commencing on December 5. It is slated to last for barely two weeks. Normally, Winter and Monsoon sessions last for full one month or even more. There is no plausible reason for cutting short the span of coming winter session. One reason may be that since Parliament is disrupted session after session why waste public money on holding long sessions. The way parliament is disrupted is unfortunate indeed.