One major criticism of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is that he has scant respect for Parliament, and thinks nothing about scheduling foreign trips during parliamentary sessions. Indeed, during the just-concluded budget session, Singh made three overseas visits, including one to meet US President Barack Obama on the sidelines of the recent Nuclear Security Summit.

Tellingly, Obama, who is scheduled to visit India in November, has planned the trip for after the US Congress concludes a session. Also, the US president cancelled an earlier tour of Asia to personally steer the controversial healthcare bill through Congress. Unlike Obama, Manmohan Singh is not directly elected, nor is he part of the Lok Sabha or lower house of Parliament, being a nominated Upper House (Rajya Sabha)member.

Not being part of the Lok Sabha reduces his stature and his effectiveness as prime minister, but Manmohan Singh carries on regardless, or appears not to care.  And all this said, the real power in India resides with the Congress party president, Sonia Gandhi, at whose ‘pleasure’Manmohan Singh remainsprime minister.

India and the United States are compelling examples of where divergent interests can neutralize areas of common ground—including even shared democratic values, and the fact that President Barack Obama has enormous personal regard for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who he publicly calls his ‘guru’.

Next week, the inaugural Indo-US strategic dialogue will be held in Washington, to be co-chaired by Indian Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. But the growing gulf between India and the United States, especially with regard to Afghanistan and Iran, is unlikely to be bridged during the meeting, unless the Americans try some pressure tactics (as they often have in the past).

India is unhappy both at the slated US withdrawal from Afghanistan starting next July and America’s growing dependence on Pakistan to stabilize the terrorism-torn country, knowing that Islamabad will use any acquired strategic space in Afghanistan against India. To hedge against this emerging Pakistani threat from Afghanistan, India is sidling closerto Iran, one of its previous Northern Alliance partners against the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

India and the United States became almost aberrantly close during the earlier George W.Bush administration, which initiated and partly concluded the landmark Indo-US nuclear deal. Obama, who opposed the nuclear deal as a senator, for his part approved the follow-on reprocessing agreement after some foot-dragging, but won’t permit the export of enrichment and reprocessing technologies, which are committed to India under the agreement.

Krishna, meanwhile, recently backed Iran’s uranium swap deal with Turkey and Brazil, and he’ll have to put up a spirited defence of his stance in the upcoming strategic dialogue. On the other hand, he may also capitulate to the Americans, as this writer expects him to.

During the trip I talked about earlier today, I took in Mysore and visited the famous Mysore Palace--once the seat of the government of the Wodeyar dynasty that ruled over this southern principality from the 14th century until a few decades back when India abolished the privy purses of royal kingdoms.

But far from being awed by the palace's undoubtedly beautiful Indo-Saracenic architecture that blends together Hindu, Muslim, Rajput and Gothic styles, I came back dismayed at the negligence these monuments contend with. The neglect isn't something restricted to the Mysore Palace. Our heritage sites and historical monuments for most parts are woefully maintained despite several federal and state departments that have been instituted to do just this.

At the Mysore Palace, we were shepherded around by an elderly guide who rattled off details--dates of coronations, number of minarets, amount of gold used--as if  he was on auto pilot, making seem humdrum even the interesting, glamorous lives of the kings who resided here.  Several artefacts are in urgent need of restoration, and labelling on the paintings and other items on display are faded, sloppily worded and ineffectively positioned.

I wonder why this happens in India--there has to be an explanation beyond the callous attitude of our governance. Is it possible that as a people, we live so much in the present, and supposedly have such a great future to look forward to, that the past isn't something we bother to cherish?

Because India has almost as many holy men as it has cricketers, Indian officialdom remains in denial about the effect that the 1959 decision to give His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso, the Dalai Lama of Tibet, asylum (along with an indeterminate number of his followers) has had on relations with China. Although Delhi has sought to normalise relations since at least 1978, such efforts have foundered on the rock of Zhongnanhai's distrust of Indian intentions.

To the Chinese leadership, by 'protecting' if not encouraging the Dalai Lama, India is a willing participant in what it regards as an international effort to 'split' or weaken China. But if the presence of the Dalai Lama in India has had a baleful effect on Sino-Indian ties, no less harmful has his half-century of absence from Tibet been for the people that revere him. Although few would mourn certain aspects of the Lama System in Tibet, such as the practice of using the poor as serfs or the fusion of religious with temporal roles, some strands in Tibetan culture deserve to be eternal, including its contribution to medicine and to Buddhism.

The Delhi-Agra-Jaipur junket is considered India's Golden Triangle of tourism - it's the must do on any Indian itinerary of foreign tourists. Unfortunately, fewer people ensure they head towards south India, other than maybe the state of Kerala, which over the past few years has done a stupendous job of marketing itself as a splendid destination for rejuvenation and relaxation.

Other destinations in the south are less sought after even among domestic tourists, especially the likes of us who live in Delhi. I've never lived in the south of India, but decided last year to explore each southern state one at a time. This week, we travelled through the state of Karnataka. Bangalore, considered India's Silicon Valley, is the capital of Karnataka. I've been to Bangalore before on work and it's like any other Indian metro - buzzing, overcrowded, poorly planned and clogged to its gills. But we headed south from Bangalore towards Mysore and the region of Coorg, a coffee plantation district.

These drives were pure pleasure. The highways were wide, newly built, well maintained and provided several stunning landscape views. Karnataka is hilly, and the temperate weather ensures a sort of emerald green that eyes used to the arid heat and dust of northern India take time in getting accustomed to. In fact, the difference between the south and the north of the country was quite stark. Drive out of Delhi towards the mountains in Uttarakhand, and the first few hours of your highway traffic meanders through shamefully shabby towns. None of that was on display here. The Bangalore-Mysore corridor is a strategic IT hub, and the growth of the industry has ensured the area's development. The Coorg Valley, especially, is stunning. Its thick foliage, frequent rain showers and an unmistakable unhurried pace of life imparts to you a lovely, old-world charm. Keep it in mind for when you next plan an India trip, or if you want to get the most out of it on your first big holiday here!

This week marked the first anniversary of the Sri Lankan armed forces victory against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The military triumph last year brought to a close a civil war that had wracked the country since the early 1980s. In its wake, the regime of President Mahinda Rajpaksa has evinced little or no generosity toward the anguished Tamil minority population of the country. Many within that population weren’t avid supporters of the LTTE, but nevertheless harboured genuine grievances against the Sinhala majority. Even today, they continue to nurse a deep-seated sense of injustice.

Sadly, the ethnic triumphalism that has characterized the ruling regime will do little or nothing to assuage their concerns. If anything, they’ll be ever more convinced of their second class status as citizens of a nominally democratic country that is actually becoming an ‘ethnocracy.’

Worse still, the regime is deftly playing off two of the regional powers—China and India—against each other as both states are keen on courting Sri Lanka to reduce the influence of the other. Under these circumstances, the hopes of the Tamil minority for the redressing of their grievances may be dashed further. Such a prospect is hardly conducive to the long-term stability of Sri Lanka, despite its decisive if brutal defeat of the LTTE last year. A marginalized, frustrated and alienated ethnic minority should hardly constitute a source of jubilation on the part of the majority community, even in the aftermath of the end of a harsh, internecine civil war.

The more we're changing the more we seem to be the same. For almost two decades India seems to have been on the move on all fronts—social, political, economic and cultural. No doubt our way of life has drastically changed; India today resembles in some way the Britain of the 19th century that GM Trevelyan described in his landmark book, ‘English Social History: A Survey of Six Centuries from Chaucer to Queen Victoria,’ in which he talks about how the Industrial Revolution changed ‘the ways of life’ in the country.

But India is also so much rooted in its social, religious and cultural mores that material changes are not yielding proportionate social and cultural change.

Otherwise, how could one explain the verdict of the Allahabad High Court early last week in which a two-judge bench declared a marriage between a Hindu woman and a Muslim man null and void if the girl fails to convert? And the court cites Muslim law for its regressive verdict.

The ruling has pained many in India, including me.

Think about all those women who married Muslim men out of love and affection without succumbing to the pressure of converting. My good friend Bandana Preyashi, a young and dynamic bureaucrat in Bihar, is terribly upset. She defied her parents, her caste, her friends’ so-called concerns and the whole tradition of her family and married a Muslim man, Shahab, a few months ago.

I have written several times about the rapid changes being forced on Delhi as it prepares for the Commonwealth Games in October. At less than five months away, both aesthetic remodeling and infrastructural additions still seem a far away dream. Every street seems that much more dug up and things are consistently getting worse, at least in my eyes. Favourite joints in some locations have lost their charm, and going back to old haunts is often disillusioning.

Clearly, I'm not alone in my angst. In an article in the popular news weekly, Outlook, a former foreign secretary and well-known diplomat Salman Haidar has written a terrific piece. He has said so aptly what many of us feel so strongly. Historically, we have seen great cities flourish in a period of economic progress. Not so in India, it seems. Mumbai, a great city, dies one more death every day, with little hope that anybody can revive its woeful infrastructure and civic pride. I don't think Delhi is there, yet. But, how come even a new beginning here doesn't seem to promise a sunny dawn?

Recently, while driving through South Extension, a well-known shopping destination in South Delhi, I literally stopped in my tracks when confronted with a huge billboard ad campaign for Reebok's latest shoe line, the Easytone. These shoes, designed after much in-house research and development at Reebok, apparently promise to help women tone up, and claim that wearing them ensures you work the leg muscles up to 28 percent more, thanks to a new technology. That's a tall claim, and the huge billboard which covered more than 70 percent of a building's length was in line with that sentiment. But, the image of the woman in the ad, although her face is not shown, in barely-there gym wear was what really attracted attention. The same ad campaign I found out later (after some internet searching) had first attracted attention in markets across Europe and the United States.

It was launched a few months back in India and considering what the ads look like, I am surprised it's not been vilified by our 'moral brigade,’ who are often prone to ripping apart posters and banning books, plays and movies that don't agree with their ideologies. I conducted a tiny, informal poll to see whether people I knew found the ad offensive, sexist or in poor taste. Incredibly enough, there was little fervent opinion. I don't really know what this suggests—that we are more open now at least when it comes to what women wear, or less excited by show of skin—but I remain surprised the ad has generated such little controversy.

North-east India again hit the national consciousness last week for the same reason it has been doing for the past 50 years.

Indian security forces killed three people belonging to the Naga tribe inside Manipur, along the border of Manipur and Nagaland. And the incident took place over the same issue it usually does in this region: assertion of Naga identity.

The immediate spur was the proposed visit after 40 years by Naga insurgent leader Thuigaleng Muivah to his native village Somdel in Manipur. The state government saw in the visit an attempt by the Naga tribe to drag up the old issue of bifurcation of Manipur and the creation of Greater Nagaland, to comprise all of the areas dominated by the Naga tribe.

The state of Manipur is divided into hills and valleys. The hills are dominated by various Naga and non-Naga tribes, while the valleys are inhabited by the majority of Meite community, which practices the Hindu religion.

There has been deep distrust between tribal and non-tribal people in the state. Various Naga tribes, the second-largest group in the state, feel neglected by the state government, which hasn’t developed the hilly areas the same way it has developed the valley. Meanwhile, the tribal groups aren’t given adequate socio-political representation in the state. As a result, Nagas want a separate state or the merger of their area with other Naga dominated areas, like Nagaland or the creation of a Greater Nagaland comprising all the areas in the north-east dominated by the Naga tribes.