But some of the big government supporters stayed home, including Bahujan Samaj Party leader Mayawati, while some UPA allies like Trinamool Congress and DMK were represented by lower ranking leaders. DMK chief M. Karunanidhi cited health reasons, which is understandable as the 87 year-old is wheelchair-bound most of the time. What came as a surprise was that his son and union minister M.K. Alagiri declined the invitation on the grounds that he is “on a diet.”

Singh presented his government’s report card for the year, saying, “Let no one doubt we have done much.” He did, though, admit that his government could have done better. But by roping in the two Yadavs as well Deve Gowda, an important leader of Karnataka state where the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party is in power, the Singh government has sent a signal of consolidation in these difficult times.

The UPA’s show of strength has come at a time when the government is grappling with spiraling food inflation, a plunging rupee, a severe economic slowdown and the opposition’s accusations of policy paralysis.

Still, Tuesday’s dinner party projected a positive image ahead of the presidential election due in July. And the UPA show of strength will have warmed the heart of Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, a serious Congress contender for the president’s post. Although UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi hasn’t yet formally announced the Congress party’s presidential candidate, Mukherjee is seen as a frontrunner, although his chances took a hit Monday when Mamata Banerjee, a fellow Bengali, told a TV station that Mukherjee wouldn’t be her first choice for the post.

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The media has been full of reports of holidaymakers opting to pay cancellation charges and rebooking with other airlines as what some are describing as a “sick out” continued past the weeklong mark yesterday, as about 200 pilots stopped coming to work over fears for their career prospects.

Air India, which last month was promised a bailout package worth about $6 billion over a nine year period, has so far lost about Rs 150 crore ($28 million) during the eight day action, prompting the sacking of more than 70 pilots who had called in sick.

On May 12, Civil Aviation Minister Ajit Singh invited all former civil aviation ministers to hear their suggestions on resolving the crisis and he met with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who advised him to ensure that airfares don’t go up as a result of the strike. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) issued an order warning airlines against hiking fares following reports that carriers planned to increase airfares by about 20 percent. The DGCA reminded airlines that the costs of operating scheduled flights hadn’t undergone any major changes in the past two months, meaning a fare hike was unwarranted.

Ajit Singh has also signaled his willingness to talk with the striking pilots, but asked them to first apologize to passengers for the inconvenience if they wished to hold talks with the government. He reminded the striking pilots that if the strike action continued, they might soon not have an airline to work for. He also said the strike had raised a credibility issue for Air India, and appealed to the striking pilots to take into consideration the difficulties being faced by thousands of passengers.

However, the now-derecognized Indian Pilots Guild accused management of doing precious little to redress genuine grievances, with IPG General Secretary Capt. E. Kapadia arguing that the airline management hadn’t taken any initiative in dealing with core issues that prompted the pilots’ action. NDTV reports that the pilots are hoping the government “will meet three of their demands – take back the sacked pilots, re-recognize IPG and give them some sort of assurance that their earlier demands of a career progression would be taken care of.”

The Supreme Court has for its part urged Air India management to hold negotiations with the agitators to resolve the “internal” matter. Whether such calls will prompt the Air India management, the government and the striking pilots to set their egos aside in the interests of saving India’s national carrier, remains to be seen.

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Still, there were some issues of contention. Clinton began her trip in Kolkata, where media reports suggested that she discussed the Teesta waters issues and foreign direct investment with West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.  However, Banerjee told reporters after the talks that actually, she didn’t discuss the Teesta issue or FDI.

Moving on to  the New Delhi leg of her India trip, Clinton held separate talks with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh,  her Indian counterpart S.M. Krishna and United Progressive Alliance chairperson Sonia Gandhi. There, Clinton discussed the question of terrorism emanating from Pakistan, and was candid in arguing that Pakistan wasn’t doing enough to eradicate terror sanctuaries.

At their joint press conference, both Clinton and Krishna increased pressure on Pakistan to take steps against the perpetrators of the November 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. Indeed, Clinton didn’t mince her words, explaining the United States had reason to believe that Lashkar-e-Taiba founder and Jamaat-ud Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed was one of the principal architects of the 26/11 attacks.

Meanwhile, India is also reducing its dependence on Iranian oil, which should be music to American ears. India’s oil imports from Iran now account for about 9 percent of the total, compared with 12 percent several months ago. Clinton welcomed Indian steps in this direction and said India must step up pressure on Tehran.

On the flip side, some glaring issues remained unresolved. From the Indian perspective, the U.S. visa regime for Indian professionals continues to be “protectionist.” From Washington’s standpoint, India is unrelenting on sticking points concerning full implementation of the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal.

Krishna for his part said that he raised the visa issue with Clinton. “I did convey our concerns about the continuing difficulties on mobility of professionals, especially for our IT companies, and protectionist sentiments in the U.S. with regard to global supply chain in services industry,” he said.

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For the first time, Pakistan conveyed its keenness on emulating the China-India bilateral relations model in its ties with India wherein the two sides press on and put contentious issues on the backburner.

As a result, the Singh-Zardari talks culminated in the promise of a visa relaxation agreement facilitating greater people-to-people and business-to-business contacts to be signed during home secretary talks expected to be held later this month. For Pakistan, which until the Gen. Pervez Musharraf era kept on playing the broken record of “Kashmir first, trade later,” this will be a major confidence building measure.

The two leaders have also agreed to sign the much-awaited Sir Creek agreement regarding a dispute about the maritime boundary in the marshy region of Kutch. If Indo-Pakistan relations continue to follow this kind of upward trajectory, it may be done as soon as later this year when the Indian prime minister is expected to undertake an official visit to Pakistan. The draft agreement on Sir Creek has reportedly been ready for years, but the two sides could never muster the political will to sign it. Coupled with the recent advancement made by the two neighbors on improving trade ties and Pakistan’s decision to grant Most Favored Nation status to India for trade, the visit has resulted in steady improvement of overall bilateral ties.

Further evidence of increased bonhomie between India and Pakistan was unveiled hours before Zardari landed on Indian soil. India’s director general of military operations (DGMO) talked to his Pakistani counterpart at 7am on Sunday and offered help to rescue over 100 Pakistani soldiers who were buried in an avalanche in Siachen on Saturday. The Pakistani DGMO thanked his Indian counterpart for the offer and told him that he would revert to him if help was required.

During the 40-minute discussion, the two leaders had “a friendly and constructive engagement” and the discussion covered “all aspects” of India and Pakistan bilateral ties, Indian Foreign Secretary Ranjan Mathai said at a press conference after the talks. Both leaders noted that there was steady progress in the Indo-Pakistan dialogue. Mathai said Singh had expressed appreciation that Pakistan has moved forward on trade-related issues.

On the most contentious aspect of India-Pakistan ties – the terror issue – Singh underlined the urgent need for Pakistan to bring to book the perpetrators of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks. Singh made a specific reference to Hafiz Saeed, the founder of Lashkar-e-Taiba and the alleged mastermind of the 26/11 attacks, who now has a $10 million U.S. bounty on his head. Zardari said what he presumably had been briefed by his Army Chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani to say: that the issue needs to be discussed at length between the two sides.

Singh accepted Zardari’s invitation to visit Pakistan and added that he would be “happy to visit Pakistan at a mutually convenient time.” Singh said he and Zardari had “constructive talks,” and the two sides were “willing to find practical, pragmatic solutions on all issues,” NDTV reported. He said it was a “common wish that ties should normalize between the two countries.” Singh said many issues were discussed, and that he was satisfied with the outcome. For his part, Zardari said Pakistan would like to have better relations with India and added that he hoped to meet Singh soon on Pakistani soil.

While Congress General Secretary Rahul Gandhi attended the lunch, Rahul’s mother Sonia Gandhi skipped the event. She reportedly didn’t give any reason for her inability to attend.

Pakistan’s Interior Minister Rehman Malik, who also attended the lunch, held a brief, informal and unscheduled meeting with his Indian counterpart P. Chidambaram. Chidambaram was not in town until the previous day and had been directed by Singh to be present. Malik described his meeting with Chidambaram as “a very fruitful visit with good meetings…The visit will be a milestone for greater understanding.”

From the Indian perspective, the biggest hurdle in normalization of India-Pakistan relations is Pakistan’s continued apathy toward New Delhi’s concerns on the terror issue, particularly Islamabad’s attitude over Saeed. Still, one positive point must not be lost sight of in all this: since 26/11, there hasn’t been a single terror incident that has been traced by India directly to Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence.

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The decision was hailed as a major move towards improving relations between India and Pakistan, and in newspaper editorials and TV debates the visit was widely seen as a chance to transform relations between the traditional rivals. But the positive mood was quickly overshadowed by Washington’s announcement of a $10 million bounty on Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) founder Hafiz Saeed, who is accused of being one of the masterminds behind the 2008 attack on Mumbai.

India has long demanded that Pakistan rein in the fundamentalist leader. Following the Mumbai attacks, India suspended all talks with its neighbor, and for nearly two years the bilateral relationship remained in limbo, with New Delhi accusing Islamabad of sheltering the perpetrators of the attack, something that Pakistan denied.

However, both countries realized the futility of their political paranoia and resumed the normalization process. It was the result of this peace initiative that Pakistan granted Most Favored Nation status to India, a landmark moment in their relationship. Meanwhile, both countries have been intensifying trade ties in order to promote positive contact and sideline elements antagonistic to normal relations between the nations.

In his recent meeting with Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raja Gilani in Seoul, Singh expressed his desire to visit Pakistan. The idea is to meet with the civilian government in Islamabad for meaningful talks that will help the people of both countries come together. Zardari’s private visit to the shrine of Sufi Saint Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti in Ajmer on April 8 therefore provided India with a wonderful opportunity to engage the Pakistani leadership in talks and build on this progress.

But the United States’ bounty on Saeed took the focus away from these discussions. And it begs the question why the Saeed announcement needed to be made when it was, especially when Saeed doesn’t actually appear to be in hiding – he has been highly visible in Pakistan and addresses rallies in different parts of the country with some frequency. In other words, he’s not Mullah Omar or some al-Qaeda leader hiding in Pakistan’s border caves who needs to be flushed out.

At the end of the day, Saeed is a bilateral issue between New Delhi and Islamabad, and it’s they who should handle it. The best way to marginalize the forces and ideas that organizations like LeT represent is to strengthen the progressive constituencies of both countries. By announcing a bounty on Saeed, the United States is giving him a new lease of life and just another excuse to mobilize anti-American and anti-Indian sentiments in Pakistan.

New Delhi and Islamabad must consider the long-term interests of both countries, rather than fall prey to irritants and become prisoners to political paranoia.

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Zardari will be arriving in New Delhi on Sunday morning with a 40-member delegation. Only one cabinet minister, Interior Minister Rehman Malik, is expected to be part of Zardari’s delegation, which will be comprised mostly of family members. Significantly, though, Singh is expected to have a half hour private meeting with Zardari during his visit.

Singh’s office is said to have toyed with the idea of making Zardari’s visit an official one, but it was decided that an informal approach was best as there simply wouldn’t have been time to put anything politically meaningful together at such short notice.

During the one-on-one session with Zardari, scheduled to be held at the prime minister’s official residence in New Delhi, Singh is expected to raise the issue of Hafiz Saeed, the alleged terrorist who the United States has just placed a $10 million bounty on. Pakistan has repeatedly told India that New Delhi is yet to provide any credible evidence against Saeed, although the Indian government’s consistent position is that it has in fact done so.

No significant announcements are expected after the talks, although the simple fact that the two leaders are meeting in this way is an encouraging sign that the two sides are engaged at the highest level.

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The reverberations in the Indian polity were understandably deafening.  Prime Minister Manmohan Singh led his United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government in contemptuously rejecting the report, dubbing it “alarmist.”

On the sidelines of a Padma award function in the Rashtrapati Bhavan, he explained: “The defense ministry has clarified the position. These are alarmist reports. These should not be taken at face value. The Army chief's office is an exalted office. All of us have an obligation to do nothing that lowers its dignity.”

Army Chief Gen. V.K. Singh, currently on an official visit to Nepal, meanwhile dismissed the report as “absolutely stupid.”

But even as the UPA government denied the report, it apparently tasked the Intelligence Bureau (IB) with conducting a detailed and discreet probe into the circumstances leading to the publication of the information. IB has been asked by the government to find out which government officials the newspaper was in touch with in the past 11 weeks.

The issue dominated the proceedings of the Parliamentary Standing Committee meeting on Wednesday, where a number of MPs engaged in a heated debate. Defense Secretary Shashi Kant Sharma explained the government’s position on the subject, and dismissed the newspaper report as “exaggerated” and “loose talk.”  Sharma told the Committee that the reported Army movement was nothing but the normal process of preparedness and the Defense Ministry would be giving a detailed reply at the panel’s next meeting on April 9.

The Indian Army also rubbished the report, saying that routine training at the formation level is carried out to check mobilization according to standard operating procedure. It maintained that almost all Army units undertake this procedure at regular intervals, and once effectiveness is checked, the troops are called back. The ministry contended that in this case, too, the troops were indeed called back as normal.

Still, the report provided ammunition for the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party,which demanded that Defense Minister A.K. Antony be sacked. The BJP’s Balbir Punj said the defense minister must be held accountable. Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, meanwhile, wrote on Twitter that the “PM should clear the air so that confidence of people is not moved.”

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Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had already made India’s intentions clear. Last week, in a statement to parliament, the government demonstrated India’s “inclination” to back the resolution. But critics say that New Delhi’s unprecedented step has been dictated more by coalition politics, as one of the regional parties in Tamil Nadu, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), a coalition partner of the ruling United Progressive Alliance government, has been pressuring the central government to vote against Sri Lanka. They note that no political party in Tamil Nadu can ignore the issue of the state’s fellow Tamils in Sri Lanka’s eastern and northern provinces.

Some commentators also argue that by going against its Asian neighbour and siding with the U.S-backed resolution, India is only pushing the island nation further into the arms of China, which voted against the resolution, and which over the years has become a strategic ally of Sri Lanka.

Yet by voting for the resolution, India is surely simply signaling a new found diplomatic determination and demonstrating that it has outgrown its misplaced fear of the increasing presence of China in its periphery.

The big question, though, is whether this resolution will have the intended impact on the Sri Lankan government and help foster reconciliation? After all, past experience suggests that Western-backed U.N. resolutions tend only to make the parties harden their positions, and have allowed the Rajapaksa government to whip up majority Sinhala chauvinism.

Either way, the latest resolution suggests the international community – including Sri Lanka’s large neighbor to the north – is no longer going to be held hostage by Colombo’s political posturing and empty promises to look into the grievances of the Tamil minority and the gross human rights violations that took place as the war came to a bloody conclusion in 2009.

India’s changed stance is unlikely to be simply about domestic political pressure. Political observers note that New Delhi is frustrated by the Rajapaksa government’s failure to devolve power in keeping with the 13th amendment of its 1987 Constitution. Also, India supported Sri Lanka in its war against the LTTE, but its generous assistance was offered in the hope that the island nation would in turn be generous and try to help the minority secure their constitutional rights.

It’s baffling to outsiders why the government in Colombo has allowed the opportunity for reconciliation and nation building to slip away. The country has seen the bloody consequences of alienating its 13 percent Tamil minority, so you you’d think that sense would prevail and that the majority Sinhala would try to integrate the minority to ensure a more peaceful future. Almost three decades of war should have offered a lesson that alienation and ignorance of the demands and genuine concerns of the Tamils will only lead to endless conflict and the destabilization of the economy and the country.

The LTTE has been defeated, but the cause that prompted its creation is still alive. The U.N. resolution shouldn’t be seen as a reprimand of Sri Lanka, rather a reminder to the island about its duties to its own people.

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India has had a strategic partnership in place with South Korea since 2010. Oddly enough, the last time an Indian prime minister visited Seoul was back in 1993, when Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao made the journey.

Singh’s Seoul visit should be seen in two parts – first an official visit (March 24-25) that will include delegation-level talks with President Lee Myung-bak, which will be followed by the Nuclear Security Summit (March 26-27).

From Seoul’s point of view, one of the main points of bilateral concern, apart from the tangle over South Korean steel giant POSCO, which has been embroiled in a dispute over building a captive port in India, will be reaching an agreement on civil nuclear cooperation. India wants to conclude a nuclear agreement as early as possible with a nation with which it has strong bilateral trade relations – Seoul and New Delhi have set an “achievable” bilateral trade target of $30 billion by the end of 2014.

But there’s an interesting question surrounding all this: why hasn’t India pursued a stronger relationship with South Korea?

Many would point to the dynamics of India-China relations. India may have been seeking to stabilize its rocky relations with Beijing. But now that China has started flexing its diplomatic and military muscles not only in its own backyard, but also in nations close to India, New Delhi may be willing to explore its diplomatic and economic options. South Korea and other nations may stand to gain if India reaches out for more strategic partners in the future.

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Controversy has been swirling around Dinesh Trivedi, who has reportedly handed in his resignation only hours after presenting his maiden rail budget in parliament on March 14. The problem for the Congress-led government is that the pressure on him to step down has apparently come not from Singh, whose party strongly backed the budget, but Mamata Banerjee, who heads Trivedi’s own Trinamool Congress. Banerjee is also chief minister of West Bengal, and was said to have been angered over Trivedi’s suggestion of a moderate hike in passenger rail fares, something that hasn’t been done for years.

Banerjee is said to have demanded either a rollback of the plan, or his resignation. His continued defiance triggered a letter from Banerjee to Singh recommending that he be sacked and replaced by another Trinamool union minister, Mukul Roy. The government has for its part conveyed to her that there is no way the government could relieve Trivedi of his duties as railway minister before March 30, when parliament is expected to pass the rail budget. However, reports have emerged today that there is pressure within the Congress to decide this sooner.

This is classic theater of the absurd. But it has also brought into question the future of the UPA government, which depends on the troublesome Trinamool Congress for support. The Congress is examining its options as the rail budget is now the government’s property, and if the budget fails to pass in parliament the government will have no choice but to step down. (The Indian Constitution mandates the ouster of the government if it fails to get a money bill passed, and the rail budget is one such bill.)

The Congress is now mulling whether to replace Trinamool Congress (TMC) with the Samajwadi Party, the latter which has 22 members in the Lok Sabha, compared with TMC’s 21 members. The Congress can also take comfort from the fact that Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) has been so badly battered in the just-concluded election in Uttar Pradesh that it doesn’t make much sense for it to oppose the UPA government.

But the idea of SP and BSP steadying the UPA ship is fraught with difficulties, not least the fact that both parties are facing a plethora of corruption cases that are now being investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation. While this gives political leverage to the central government, it also makes the UPA government vulnerable ethically.

That said, ethics haven’t exactly been high on the list of priorities for India’s political parties.

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