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from India Insight:
Narendra Modi follows his roadmap to Delhi
The Narendra Modi charm offensive showed up in full force in India's capital on Wednesday. Modi, the main opposition party's likely prime ministerial candidate gave a speech on progress and development at one of Delhi's premier colleges, the youthful audience greeted the 62-year-old politician with gusto, news outlets called his speech a "roadmap for India," protesters showed up en masse and Twitter went bananas.
If not a direct declaration of grand political ambition, the nearly one-hour speech at the Shri Ram College of Commerce sounded like a pitch for a national role: here was the chief minister of Gujarat talking about development to more than a thousand students in New Delhi, staying away from the usual and divisive political overtones, repeatedly referring to the youth of the country (future voters), and outlining his vision for India.
"The whole world is looking at India as a big marketplace. Why? Because they (other countries) think they can sell here easily. It is the demand of our time to make India a leader in manufacturing and dump our goods in the world market," Modi said, according to our report on the Reuters news wire.
In December he won a fourth consecutive term in office, and since then many in his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), India's main opposition group, have called for him to lead the party in national elections due by early 2014.
from India Insight:
Why Rahul Gandhi stepped into the spotlight
The Congress has for a long time acknowledged Rahul Gandhi as heir apparent and several party members had openly said that he is their leader. Which means his appointment on Saturday as the party’s vice president -- a post just below that of Congress chief and Rahul’s mother Sonia -- was in many ways just a matter of finding him a suitable title.
So why should it matter?
One reason for Gandhi’s long-awaited promotion was to energise the party for a round of state elections in the run-up to the national elections in 2014. The Congress remains a party which derives its charisma from the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty and party workers openly swoon over the family. News of Gandhi’s appointment was greeted with fireworks and proclamations by party leaders of brighter days ahead.
from India Insight:
Rahul Gandhi takes first step in race to be India’s next PM
It's the news some Congress leaders have waited for with bated breath. On Saturday, spokesman Janardhan Dwivedi announced the party’s decision to make Rahul Gandhi its vice-president.
Pressure had been mounting on the “young emperor” from within the troubled party to take charge. For years, Gandhi had shown no inclination to do so. But with his formal promotion to the party’s number two position next to mother Sonia, the 42-year-old is ready to claim the throne of the world's largest democracy in the 2014 elections.
from India Insight:
The race for India’s next prime minister
With the Congress-led coalition government more than halfway through its five-year term, the political temperature is heating up in the world's largest democracy. The question on everyone's minds is -- who's going to be the next prime minister?
A recent Nielsen survey had showed Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi was the top choice for the post, ahead of Congress party scion Rahul Gandhi and Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar.
from Pakistan: Now or Never?:
From Afghanistan, the countdown to 2014
The dusty streets of Kabul are choked with traffic, restaurants selling American fast food are bustling and there is a crowd of students and parents outside a girls' school in the centre of town trying to slip through the shuttered gates at the start of the school year.
Returning to Kabul for the first time since December, there was no sense that the mood on the ground had changed significantly. But I couldn't help wondering how all this might change once foreign troops who have propped up the Afghan state for more than a decade leave in 2014. There is talk of a return to chaos and civil war, although admittedly you hear more of those grim warnings abroad and in the foreign circles of Kabul than from the people themselves who will be in the middle of it.
from MacroScope:
Fed makes low rates vow, but traders afraid of commitment
Anyone worried that the U.S. Federal Reserve tied its policy hands with its announcement last month that it is likely to keep short-term interest rates exceptionally low through late 2014 should take heart in the market reaction to Friday’s jobs report, which blew expectations out of the water.
Bond and interest-rate futures plunged after the report, which showed employers added 243,000 jobs in December, far more than the 150,000 economists had expected. Unemployment dropped to 8.3 percent in another encouraging sign. Fed fund futures contracts began pricing in a good chance of a rate hike by the second quarter of 2014. Before the report, bets were on a first rate hike at some point in the third quarter.
from Afghan Journal:
Afghanistan : The gnawing fear of transition
There is perhaps no word so misunderstood in Afghanistan right now as transition, or one causing as much unease among ordinary Afghans still grappling for a sense of their future.
U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, expected to soon leave the country, is on an urgent reassurance mission, leaping this week onto an open special forces buggy without a flak jacket or heavy escort to tour a former insurgent stronghold in Kandahar's Khakrez district, hoping to prove safety is on the uptick. "Just about one year and a half ago it would have been difficult for me to be here. The security would not have allowed me to," the energetic former general told village elders clustered in sunshine on a lawn walled by roses.
Eikenberry has visited probably every province of Afghanistan with his long immersion in the country, including a stint commanding U.S. forces.
