He hasn't made any friends in Washington with his dogged opposition to the US drone attacks in Pakistani territory. But former cricketer Imran Khan--a darkhorse candidate for Pakistan's prime minister as head of the Tereek-e-Insaaf party--made some of the right noises in a freewheeling interview with India's Mail Today newspaper this week.

In town to attend the World Economic Forum being held in Gurgaon, Khan made a measured promise to bring the perpetrators of the 26/11 terrorist attack on Mumbai to justice, saying, "India must understand the legal process takes time, but I will bring the Mumbai perpetrators to justice."

"We have to follow the rule of law."

That said, Pakistan has long delayed action with the argument that it lacks sufficient evidence to convict the alleged planners of the attacks--which India and the US have both alleged includes members of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency, as well as Lashkar-e-Toiba's Hafiz Saeed. And Khan reportedly waffled when confronted with a pointed question about how he'd handle a potential prosecution of Saeed if he were elected.

India's government has set itself a difficult task in vowing to keep the fiscal deficit at 5.3% in the current fiscal year and bring it down to 4.8% by 2014 and 3.0% by 2016-17. But Finance Minister P. Chidambaram is "not likely to bring in any kind of additional burden for companies in the form of any kind of tax in the next budget," according to an unnamed official in the finance ministry.

Government sources said the minister is betting on disinvestment in public sector companies and auction of spectrum for telecom firms to raise government revenue, the Hindustan Times reported Wednesday.

“This [deficit to GDP ratio] is a steep target considering the situation on hand, but the government is not likely to bring in any kind of additional burden for companies in the form of any kind of tax in the next Budget,” the paper quoted a finance ministry official as saying, on condition of anonymity.

In recent months, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has increased prices for petrol and diesel fuel to reduce the subsidy the government pays to oil companies, in a bid to move closer to balancing the budget. And a move to institute a Goods and Services Tax (or VAT) is also afoot to try to boost collections and simplify the business environment.

At the same time, however, Singh's Congress Party continues to bank on costly programs like a national employment guarantee scheme and an expansion of food subsidies for the poor to deliver votes in the next election, scheduled for 2014.

With four traffic deaths over the past five days, one of India's first modern expressways is facing new scrutiny.

According to the Times of India, the 23.6 km stretch of highway linking Noida and Greater Noida, on Delhi's eastern border, has been racking up accident statistics in its first decade of operations, even as the main developer of the area pushes its vision of an India linked by superhighways further east to the home of the Taj Mahal with the recently opened Yamuna Expressway.

As GlobalPost reported earlier this year, the Yamuna Expressway promises to transform the towns and cities along the route between New Delhi and Agra. Its planners project that the promise of speedy travel will draw multinational firms like Honda, Daewoo, and Samsung — which already have factories in a township outside New Delhi called Greater Noida — deeper into Uttar Pradesh. And, in a country plagued by woefully inadequate infrastructure, the project could well transform the economy of India's most populous state, and one of its least developed.

But the death toll is already mounting, as these high-speed thoroughfares continue to be used by slow-moving vehicles such as tractors and 75-100 cc motorbikes, according to the Times of India.

In the past five months, around 20 people have lost their lives on the Gautam Budh Expressway, as the stretch between Noida and Greater Noida is officially called.

"The expressway lacks emergency services like fire stations, tow trucks and ambulance services. The stretch has just two PCR vans, one at both ends — Mahamaya flyover in Noida and Pari Chowk in Greater Noida," TOI writes.

Six Indian-origin candidates have India closely watching this US election, as India's diaspora continues to grow in influence in America.

According to India's DNA newspaper, Dr Ami Bera, the Democratic Party candidate from California's seventh Congressional District, has the best chance of winning a Congressional seat out of the six Indian-Americans vying for a seat in the House of Representatives.

So far, only two Indian-Americans have been elected to the US Congress. Dalip Singh Saund was the first Indian-American elected to the House of Representatives in 1950s, while Bobby Jindal, now the Louisiana Governor, was the second, DNA noted.