The big-daddy of infrastructures initiatives seems to be languishing due to Government apathy. This is despite the repeated commitments made by the Prime Minister to improve infrastructure.

Deadline long buried, only 12 per cent of the Golden Quadrilateral is left but it’s crawling. As for the East-West, North-South corridor, the lights are switched off, everyone’s gone home

IndianExpress reports.

PINR is running a report detailing the fine print between Indo-China relations.

Beijing prefers a unipolar Asia-Pacific (with China as the sole superpower without any peers) and a multipolar world (with the U.S., E.U., Russia and China as four major power poles). In contrast with both Washington and Beijing, New Delhi champions multipolarity at both regional and global levels.

Rediff reports that the government is thinking on the lines of a sixth pay commission.

Congress sources say the rising political pressure from the Communists -- key partners in the United Progressive Alliance coalition -- has prompted Prime Minister Singh to announce the new pay commission.

However, former minister Arun Shourie, also quoted in the article has this to say: The Fifth Pay Commission (set up in 1994) recommendations resulted in a Rs 530 billion payout by the government. The next (sixth) pay commission would effectively wind up Indian sovereignty

IndianExpress is running a report suggesting that the India growth story seems to have reached a bump.

Corporate revenues are looking less rosy, some key imports are slackening and companies are holding off on expansion plans. This all follows a four-year stretch of blistering activity, during which India notched up growth rates of more than 7 per cent.

Also, there is a growing suspicion that the infrastructure problems that plague India -- from electricity outages to port problems to a clogged transport system -- are creating a ceiling for economic growth, which India has now bumped up against.

While we are slogging it out in India for much needed airport modernization, China seems to be going full steam ahead to complete 108 new airports between 2004 and 2009.

And it’s not only the airports; the scale of infrastructure development in China makes India's progress on the same look like a bad joke.

Don't take my word for it, check it out for yourself

Gaurav gives his humourous take on the currently in vogue pseudo-secular writing.

This post is intended for budding intellectuals, eager to make their mark in the world as tenured idiots academician or pompous courageous journalists, I hope this will be a helpful introduction for uninitiated to the treacherous and incestuous world of quislings intellectuals.

Rediff is running an article comparing the promises made by the UPA government to the progress on the ground.

With a stagnating GDP, increasing imports and decreasing exports, slower pace of economic reforms, feet-dragging over infrastructure projects and no progress on rural infrastructure, its a big thumbs down for the UPA.

There has been more news about the geek political party Paritrana, that we covered in an earlier post.

Indian Express ran an article on the same here.

There is also an interview with Paritrana’s national treasurer Chandrashekhar posted at Arthshastra.

Bangalore is not the only city dealing with the bad-roads problem.
Kerala, which has shown much desperation for more IT investment, has an equally sorry tale to tell.

Much of the roads are exactly same as what it used to be 5-10 years ago but the vehicles on these roads are 10 or 20 times what it used be; added to this the unruly drivers scornful of traffic laws. The end result of this is total chaos and traffic snarls everywhere.