India’s premier agency for cultural diplomacy, the Indian Council of Cultural Relations (ICCR), now run by the Ministry of External Affairs may soon change hands. The 63-year-old autonomous body’s mandate is to promote Indian culture abroad and is part of the government’s strategic use of soft power to woo foreign countries. MEA feels that hard selling India’s soft power in foreign countries through exchange of artistes, exhibitions, festivals, and even yoga is a better fit with the culture ministry.

Indian troops stepped up security in disputed Kashmir's main city of Srinagar on Saturday, ahead of a concert to be held later in the day by celebrated conductor Zubin Mehta. Organizers said the concert would go ahead despite demands by Indian Kashmiri separatists for the event to be cancelled on grounds it would allegedly legitimize Indian "state repression" in the restive region.

Looking to widen business arrangements with South American countries and increase trade with the region to $25 billion by 2015, India has lined up a series of high-level visits over this month and next, and is offering sops to exporters to explore markets in the continent. Talking to FE external affairs minister Salman Khurshid said, “India and Latin America have a large scope and potential to cooperate in the fields of energy, education and several other fields.” On the importance of the region, Khurshid said, “Latin America is something we need to work on.

India’s mild-mannered Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is known to be measured in his public utterances. This is perhaps why his combative response on August 30 to attacks made by the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the Rajya Sabha, India’s Upper House of Parliament, made headlines. In recent weeks, the BJP has accused Singh of presiding over a government battered by a slew of corruption scandals and failing to take steps to revive the Indian economy, which has seen a sharp deceleration in growth.

When the economic history of the decade is written someday, there very well may be a chapter about the spring and summer of 2013, when money that had been pouring into emerging market countries shifted the other way. Recently, the economies of emerging markets are looking dismal with both currencies plummeting in value against the dollar.

The Indian rupee's crash has swept away banker Nupur Sood's dream of a holiday in Venice: instead the 35-year-old will settle for cold beers on the beaches of Goa on India's west coast. "We are pampering ourselves with a leisurely holiday but it will be domestic. I guess it is the only way to compensate," said Sood, who plans to stay next month at the plush Grand Hyatt hotel in Goa, managed by Hyatt Hotels Corp, as a consolation for missing her holiday of a lifetime in Italy.

Unlike sex, despotism doesn’t usually sell. That doesn’t stop some marketers from trying. Entrepreneurs around the world are profiting from businesses and products named after blood-stained dictators. Goods that invoke Hitler, for example, are popular in India, where, it seems, some businesses think the pull of his charisma outweighs the negative connotation of his crimes. A Mumbai restaurant was recently forced to rename its Hitler’s Cross pizza after outrage from Jewish groups.

India's online population is growing six times as fast as the global average and now ranks as the third largest in the world after China and the US, a new study has indicated. The 2013 India Digital Future In Focus report from comScore, the digital measurement company, pulled together data from its different surveys to identify prevailing trends in web usage, online video, social networking and online retail.