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Is green tax an answer for a cleaner India? The author contemplates if taxation is an answer

In Bangladesh, the municipal elections held last month (January 2011) provided an opportunity to assess the trends in the country's politics. The results showed that the ruling Awami League is on a declining graph as far as its popularity is concerned.

Chinese foreign policy statements may seem sloganistic, ritualistic and without content but one has to realise it need not be articulated in the Euro-American way, says Prof. Geremie Barme of Australian National University College of Asia and Pacific.

Tehran has responded in a carefully structured, calibrated fashion to the resolution passed by the IAEA Board of Governors last Saturday regarding Iran's nuclear programme. We may not have heard the last word yet, but are quite close to it.

The Government and the political and bureaucratic class should be sensitive to the cause professed by the civil society and acknowledge that absence of accountability and responsibility could lead to anarchy of a more militant kind.

Pakistan's "memogate" controversy has raised questions about the strength of the country's civilian government. This has been admitted even by Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar.

Proceedings of the weekly interaction in the Chennai Chapter of the Observer Research Foundation

The IAC is at the cross-roads now. That it has also been the fate of most such organisations over the past years in various parts of the country should not also be lost sight of. Many have come and gone, but very few have remained as an electorally successful political outfit.

The 'multiple identities' of the Tamil-speaking people in the country have suddenly acquired an urgent need for mutual understanding between the State and the citizen. There are contextualised circumstances, which may not provide for a yard-stick to measure 'national interests' or prioritise them.

Today, the Government(s) should not be looking into questions like 'Why Telangana?'. It has lost the luxury of thought process already. Instead, it should be looking at the when and how of it.

The trilateral maritime cooperation initiative by India, Maldives and Sri Lanka, and the Outcome Document signed recently by the NSAs of the three countries, has the potential for further improving naval ties in the shared Indian Ocean Neighbourhood.

पंतप्रधान नरेंद्र मोदी आणि श्रीलंकेचे अध्यक्ष विक्रमसिंघे यांनी UPI सेवांचे उद्घाटन केले.

The real objective of the historic Indo-US civil nuclear initiative was to end decades of alienation between the world's largest democracies and build a genuine strategic partnership. Delhi and Washington knew that there could be no real partnership without resolving differences on non-proliferation that had so severely poisoned the bilateral relations from the early 1970s.

9/11 and 11-M (11th March). Two traumatic experiences ---one for the Americans and the other for the Spanish.

Senior leader of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), Mr Satish Chandra Misra, has claimed that the Vishwa Hindu Parishad's (VHP) Ayodhya Yatra in Uttar Pradesh, supported by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is an attempt to communalise the political atmosphere in the State.

While enough has come out with regard to the 1971 India-Pakistan conflict, it is imperative to ensure that the humane side of 1971 is brought to the fore, though this may not have any bearing on policy making and future geo-political developments.

The 1971 Indo-Soviet Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation was probably the most seminal foreign policy arrangement entered into by India in the 20th century. It had a profound effect on the politics and geography of South Asia, cementing what many thought was the pre-eminence of India in the region

Because of the confusioni created by different agencies in calcuating the loss to the national exchequer caused by the 2-G scam, it is imperative that the exact figure and dimensions of the scam should be arrived at by an expert body.

The US is currently training various African economies on how to meet common value systems standards, and India along with other economies, needs to press for a more inclusive system where countries "pressurise on how to manage concerns and reach viable solutions."

While the year 2003 saw many acts of terrorism in South, South-East and West Asia, as well as in Chechnya in Russia, very few major acts of terrorism were reported from Central Asia. In fact, ever since the US-led coalition went into action against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Central Asian Republics (CARs) have remained largely free of major acts of terrorism

Twelve innocent civilians, 11 of them Indonesian nationals, were killed in an explosion on August 5, 2003, in the US-franchised JW Marriott hotel in Jakarta. The Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) was suspected. If the JI is ultimately established to have been responsible, it would be the second major post-9/11 terrorist strike organised by it

There has been no credible evidence so far of any mastermind having orchestrated the various serious acts of jihadi terrorism reported during 2003, whether from Indonesia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Iraq or Turkey. The available evidence indicates that all these incidents were planned and executed by local elements, which share the pan-Islamic ideology of Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda and the International Islamic Front (IIF), b

While the United States suffered some strategic reverses, it has also made a few gains. It is not yet time to write off the United States of America.

The best thing we can say about 2012, from the nation's point of view, is that it has ended. We don't know what surprises Dr. Manmohan Singh will spring upon us in 2013? Till then ignorance is bliss.

The distinction between individual aspirations and a national dream is clear to the Chinese government where there are contradictions between the political system and the consumerism-driven economy, according to US university professor Dr. Tansen Sen.

Relations between India and Australia have reached a new maturity, based on deepening connections between their societies, economies, education sectors and policy establishments. This positions these two democracies well to work together to advance their interests in a shared Indo-Pacific region.

The focus on broadband expansion in the Union Budget is timely to take the IT revolution to the next level: social inclusion, e-commerce, media, and distance education for India?s small towns and rural pockets.

Here is a look at the 2014-15 Budget, presented by Finance Minister Arun Jaitely, through a series of graphs on allocations to various key sectors from the time of the previous NDA government.

What India needs to understand is that legislation or institutions by themselves do not bring about social change. Countries of Europe or the United States, too, had a history of political corruption. But over the years they have cleaned up their act considerably because of popular sentiment, as well as institutions and laws.

The recently concluded NPT review conference ended without a consensus document. While there is need for the NPT member states to resolve their differences sooner rather than later, the impact of the absence of a final document need not be overstated.

The year 2015 is likely to be rosy for India. There is no more doomsday scenario awaiting the country on the economic front in the year. There will be problems but India will remain a global giant with its huge, mostly young, population, a big market and vast resources.

The bottom line assessment of the third Plenum of the 18th CCCPC is that the Plenum outcome keeps Chinese economic and political developments on an evolutionary path, rather than a revolutionary one. In other words, it has sought to tweak policies, rather than offer up a radical menu.

The 4th BRICS Academic Forum has urged Summit Leaders meeting later this month in New Delhi to consider studying the establishment of financial institutions such as a Development Bank and an Investment Fund that can assist in the development of BRICS and other developing countries.

The 5th BRICS Academic Forum, comprising experts and scholars from the research and academic institutions of India, China, Brazil, Russia and South Africa, met on the 11th and 12th of March 2013 in Durban and has come up with a 5-point recommendations.

The Eighth Review Conference( Revcon) of the Non Proliferation Treaty ( NPT) at New York narrowly eked out a victory from the jaws of defeat before its close on May 28, 2010.

The recent 19th AU Summit was dominated by the drama of the election for the post of the Chairman of the AU Commission. Many analysts feel that the fight for the post has divided the Continent and done a great deal of damage to African Unity.

Sooner than later, India will have to start evaluating its e-governance projects. And in the near future, the focus will shift to the outcomes of e-governance initiatives.

Earlier during his stint in office nearly 10 years back, Ranil Wickremesinghe had mooted the idea of building a bridge - literally - across the Palk Strait, linking his country to India. Now that he is back as prime minister and as part of a 'cohabitation arrangement' but through political consensus, unlike in the past, the two governments could consider reviving the proposal for mutual and greater benefits.

There were no big reforms and no major policy turnarounds in the Union Budget presented by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley. It was a budget of small and tentative steps to help steady the ship and laid the foundation for big reforms in the months ahead.

The UPA government has allowed the withering away of the Prime Minister's Office as the ultimate source of authority in policy-making. The latest developments on the Indo-Pak LoC demand that the Congress party focus urgently on revamping the defence establishment and reclaiming the PMO's authority to coordinate national security policy.

Strangely, in Maoist circles there is near nostalgia for Shivraj Patil

As Salman Khurshid pointed out to Sartaj Aziz, Pakistan has to demonstrate its bona fides by putting an end to the large number of incidents on the LoC.