作者： bharat.cn

More than two months after India pulled out of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar has suggested New Delhi could rethink its decision.
“We haven’t closed the door on [the RCEP]. The ball is in the court of the countries concerned and whether they make it worth our while,” he told the Raisina Dialogue, a three-day conference in the Indian capital organised by the government and the Observer Research Foundation think tank.
The RCEP is a free-trade agreement between 15 nations – the 10 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand.
India had previously been expected to sign up but walked out of negotiations in a shock move in November last year, when the outline of the deal was agreed. At the time New Delhi cited concerns that its economy would suffer from an influx of overseas goods, especially from China.
The minister’s comments could breathe new life into the pact, which has been plagued by doubts since India walked out.
However, Jaishankar said the pact in its present form still did not make economic sense to India.
“The RCEP is, after all, a free-trade agreement and it has to be evaluated on its trade merits, its costs and its benefits. The bottom line was that the offers on the table did not match our requirements.”

Bollywood star Neha Bhasin has lashed out against top music composer Anu Malik, alleging that she found herself in a “sticky situation” with him as a young artist and branding him an “ugly pervert” in a series of angry tweets.
Bhasin was responding to tweets posted by fellow singer Sona Mohapatra, who was complaining that Malik had been rehired by Sony TV as a judge on Indian Idol – after being fired over accusations of sexual assault, including by her, only a year ago.
The singer-songwriter blasted Malik as a “predator” and said she had “run away from his strange moves” when she was 21. “I didn’t let myself get into a sticky situation beyond him lying on a sofa in front of me talking about my eyes in a studio,” she said, adding that she had fled the uncomfortable situation with the “ugly pervert” by telling him that her mother was waiting for her.

Deepika Padukone, Bollywood superstar and India’s highest-paid female actor, became a trending Twitter topic this week, after a strategic visit to Jawaharlal Nehru University – a center of ongoing anti-government protests.
In India’s volatile political climate where a huge debate ensued, and protests are raging over a new ‘anti-Muslim’ citizenship law, Padukone added fuel to fire by stepping into the premises of the university in New Delhi, which has become a “symbol of resistance” against an allegedly “fascist government,” to express solidarity with the protesting students. Padukone, whose latest film is released on Friday, knew exactly what she was doing.

The Left is politically irrelevant in India but its hold over educational institutions such as the JNU, or JU (Jadavpur University) make it possible to fight pitched battles from fortresses where disaffected students serve as tools for the ‘larger cause.’ In an era where news is a spectacle, the creation of unrest becomes a way for the Left to stay politically relevant. The fact that impressionable minds are pressed to the cause gives the Left’s political fight a moral veneer.