sharpeye

Recently held two-day long event of the sixth Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (PBD) in New Delhi can be said to be characterized by many momentous developments having long-term benefits for India as well as the Indians living abroad. Highlight of this event was the inauguration by Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh and concluding address by the President of India, Smt. Pratibha Patil along with speeches by various Union Ministers and Chief Ministers — Bhupinder Singh Hooda of Haryana, Narendra Modi of Gujarat, V.S. Achuthanandan of Kerala and Madhu Koda of Jharkhand. Over 1,500 members of the Indian Diaspora from different countries had converged on to New Delhi to participate in the BPD. This sixth edition of the BPD had five plenary and a similar number of working sessions. Most of the participants termed the event as a wonderful opportunity to invest in India. The Indian government was, however, eager to please the Diaspora and promised to roll out several schemes for them. The government

Assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, increased violent activities of the radical Islamists along the Pakistan-Afghan border, Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal potentially at risk along with other domestic developments are said to have pushed Pakistan on the brink of disaster, particularly if the present situation is allowed to further deteriorate. These developments do take a dispassionate observer further away from the normalcy that one would like to see returned to Pakistan. The distance from normalcy means that the war on terror is hampered and the kind of political transition that one would like to see towards a moderate regime becomes even more difficult. Benaizr’s Assassination The tragic assassination of Benazir Bhutto has cast a dark shadow across Pakistan, a nuclear-armed state with a long history of militarism and militancy. Despite the posthumous accolades, Mrs. Bhutto was a controversial figure. She opted to live outside of Pakistan to avoid her numerous crimi