The death toll in Syria keeps mounting as forces loyal to Bashar al-Assad continue to pummel the civilian opposition to his regime. In fact, after it had crossed the 5,000 mark in January of this year the United Nations stopped keeping count of the casualties. The attempts of the Arab League to induce Assad to see reason and make the necessary concessions to end the blood-letting have failed. Now it has turned to the U.N Security Council to pass a resolution that would impose multilateral sanctions on Syria.

Russia, which is a major arms supplier to the regime, and is also loath to support the growing norm in support of humanitarian intervention, is proving unwilling to go along with other members who are ready to act.

Not surprisingly, China, which shares similar domestic concerns and faces much current unrest in Tibet, is also resistant to imposing sanctions on the Assad regime.

Indian Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar has lashed out at Congress President Sonia Gandhi’s dream project, namely the National Food Security Bill, which the government introduced in the Lok Sabha on December 22.

Pawar went on record as saying that there are insufficient funds to implement the Food Security Bill in its present form. However, he said “This is not a question of [an] individual. This is a question of investment in agriculture.”

The bill, if it became law and was fully implemented, would cost the national exchequer Rs 1.1 lakh crore ($22 billion) annually in agriculture liabilities alone, but would provide subsidized food grain to more than 60 percent of the country’s population.

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Shreyasi Singh took a break from blogging for Indian Decade as she settled into her role as managing editor of the Indian edition of business magazine Inc. But we're happy to welcome her back from today.

At the beginning of this year, I was lucky enough to find myself at the Make a Difference (MaD) forum in Hong Kong, an annual gathering of young people from across Asia.

Over the three days of the event, which was attended by more than 1,200 people, there was a lot of positive, encouraging talk about how young people need to stand up for the social causes they believe in, and why they should feel empowered enough to believe they can actually make a change. Genuinely well-meaning and smart change initiatives from across Asia – a civic-minded school in India, a green architectural firm in Taiwan, and a corporate volunteer program in China – were talked about. One great speaker after speaker from across the world struck the can-do chord that young people respond to.

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India marked its 63^rd Republic Day on Thursday, and it was on this day in 1950 that the world’s largest democracy adopted its Constitution and declared itself a Republic. This remarkable journey was on full display in the capital, where the country presented its cultural, economic and military might at the majestic Rajpath, the country's ceremonial boulevard.

Due to heavy security and associated restrictions on mobility, people walked many miles to reach the two-hour event, with people from across India gathering from the early hours to catch a glimpse of the parade.

Thailand’s first female prime minister, Yingluck Shinawatra, was the guest of honor at this year’s Republic Day celebrations. The choice of guest also indicates New Delhi’s drive towards greater engagement with Southeast Asian countries. It’s no coincidence that the Thai premier’s sojourn in New Delhi coincides with the visit of Burma Foreign Minister Wunna Maung Lwin.

India has embarked upon a strategic road that now, apparently, includes Thailand. The January 25 agreement between India and Thailand to expedite trade talks should also make China wary as it marks a continuation of a process begun in 2011 with South Korea, Indonesia and Vietnam – all key strategic concerns for China.

On Wednesday, India and Thailand decided to work closely in building up their infrastructural linkages, specifically with a 1,360 kilometer highway passing through Burma. Also, with an eye on China, India is all set to secure some strategic leverage in the Andaman Sea as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh offered his visiting Thai counterpart Yingluck Shinawatra support in the construction of a deep sea port at Dawei on the southwestern coast of Burma, a country which figures prominently in the Chinese “String of Pearls” strategy of developing assets in the Indian Ocean region.

India’s rationale for engaging Thailand and honoring the Thai premier as the “chief guest” for this year’s Indian Republic Day parade is to make its “maritime neighbor,” as Singh described Thailand, into one that is physically connected. No deadline has been set for making the promised India-Burma-Thailand Trilateral Highway a reality. The two sides need to set aside political hyperbole and get theproject completed as early as possible, perhaps as early as 2015 or 2016 in mind.

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Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s new Communications Advisor Pankaj Pachauri has already initiated an interesting change in the Prime Minister’s Office, just a couple of days after starting his new job – launching an  account for Singh on Twitter.

Pachauri, a TV journalist, was appointed last week with a brief to focus on social media, which has been utilized to good effect to bash the government by social activist Anna Hazare and his team since last year. Several ministries in the United Progressive Alliance government, including the Ministry of External Affairs, have been on Twitter and Facebook for quite some time. The MEA, in particular, used social networking sites during the Libyan crisis last year, with then-Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao using these sites to inform the world about the evacuation status of Indians who were stranded in Libya.

The PMO’s first tweet, uploaded Sunday, was: “‘You make all of us proud’ – PM tells young bravehearts at Bravery Award function.” The tweet also had links to Singh’s speech and photographs of the event. Pachauri is reported to have told PMO staffers manning the Twitter account to give near real-time updates on the prime minister’s program, arguing that the public should know what their head of government is doing for them. Pachauri’s move is also aimed at helping the media follow what is going on with the prime minister’s work. Sources said the PMO would soon be launching other social media accounts, including Facebook.

Anna Hazare may be struggling with medical problems even as his supporters have started backtracking on their strategy of effectively pinning all of India’s corruption problems on the ruling Congress party. But the 74-year-old Gandhian social activist can’t be written off quite yet.

While his chastised team members have begun a raucous campaign in the five poll-bound states of Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Goa and Manipur by publicly stating that they aren’t for or against any particular party, Hazare himself has attacked the United Progressive Alliance government like never before.

Three weeks after his fast in Mumbai over the Lokpal (ombudsman) Bill issue ended in a whimper, a livid Hazare broke his silence on Sunday, penning another strongly worded letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in which he leveled two serious claims against the head of the government for: “betraying” the country, and “controlling” parliament. But unlike with previous letters, which were addressed only to the prime minister, Hazare sent a copy of the letter to Congress leader and heir apparent Rahul Gandhi, main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) President Nitin Gadkari and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati.

The upcoming assembly polls in five states – Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Goa and Manipur – could be a political game changer for India.

The key race is Uttar Pradesh (UP), India’s most populous state and often seen as a bellwether for general elections. The seven-phase polling for the 403-member UP assembly, which gets underway this month, will continue until March, with vote counting taking place on March 6. The result is expected to be known the same day, thanks to the electronic voting machines that are to be used in all five states.

The UP poll is a battle between four major parties – the ruling Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), its main rival Samajwadi Party (SP), the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) (the main opposition at the center) and the Congress party. Most analysts, though, see it effectively as a two-way race between the SP and the BSP, with the former having the advantage.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Indo-China war. Yet while China seems to have moved on, India is still seemingly nursing its wounds. Indeed, the sad fact is that it has been unable to reconcile the psychological trauma inflicted during its infancy as a nation.

This is reflected in the attitude of India towards its neighbour, and the way it allows even small issues to mar bilateral relations. Despite rhetorical flourishes over how the two countries are natural partners in growth, Sino-India relations are increasingly complicated. The two nations are engaging with each other on boundary issues, undertaking regular high-level political contacts and seeing bilateral trade soar. But although they both believe in a multi-polar world, their distrust for each other seems to be increasing.

Take the example of a recent dispute concerning Indian traders in China. Two traders were held hostage in Yiwu because the company they were representing failed to honor its business commitments.The media and some other groups in India hyped the issue to such an extent that it placed a further strain on political ties. This is despite the fact that India has had numerous similar issues with other nations, including Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka. The difference in those cases, though, is that disputes don’t become potential political flashpoints.

Once again the baying of religious zealots has won the day in India. Salman Rushdie, who had been invited to India’s Jaipur Literary Festival, won’t be in attendance thanks to the intransigence of some Muslim clerics.

The chief minister of Rajasthan, Ashok Gehlot, went to Home Minister P. Chidambaram to express his apprehensions about maintaining law and order in his state if the writer was allowed to attend the festival. Sadly, this form of close-mindedness is hardly a new phenomenon in India, and nor is it the preserve of some obscurantist ulema.

Some years ago, Hindu extremists hounded the noted Indian painter, Maqbool Fida Husain, from Mumbai because they deemed that some of his portraits of Hindu icons were offensive. It’s certainly ironic that Husain was granted citizenship in the emirate of Qatar, hardly a bastion of liberal democratic values. Even the ostensibly secular, communist government in West Bengal couldn’t provide indefinite refuge to the well-known Bangladeshi feminist writer Taslima Nasrin.