Foreign Policy Blogs

India

Right to Education – Need for Innovative Approaches

Right to Education – Need for Innovative Approaches

Almost a year ago, I enthusiastically wrote about the recognition of Right to Education (RTE) as a Fundamental Right in India. Making elementary education an entitlement for children in the 6-14 age group, the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 was expected to directly benefit close to ten million children who […]

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P. Sainath on 'Paid News' in India

P. Sainath on 'Paid News' in India

Palagummi Sainath a renowned journalist and rural affairs editor of The Hindu delivered the First Maharaj Kaul Memorial Lecture at University of Berkeley, California on April 11. Sainath has written extensively on farmer suicide and paid news, issues that have not been widely reported in the mainstream Indian media. At Berkeley, Sainath choose to speak […]

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Anna Hazare's Initiative: People's Movement in a Constitutional Democracy?

Anna Hazare's Initiative: People's Movement in a Constitutional Democracy?

It is important to keep Gandhi untarnished. The Gandhian can be negotiated with. Two developments in India during the past week convinced me of the above approach in Indian politics. American journalist Joseph Lelyveld’s book The Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India created furore in the country. The book has been banned […]

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Defending Gandhiji’s Legacy

Defending Gandhiji’s Legacy

The controversy over Joseph Lelyveld’s new book on Mahatma Gandhi has at least had the salutary effect of illuminating both the virtues and vices of the Indian polity.

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Cricket: The Game, Diplomacy and Beyond

Cricket: The Game, Diplomacy and Beyond

As the attention of the Indian cricket fans moves away from Mohali to Mumbai, the India-Pakistan game earlier this week entered the Hall of Fame of Indo-Pak cricket diplomacy encounters. The unique reverence for the game in the sub-continent has been often used as diplomatic ice-breaker in the past. The special place accorded to cricket […]

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Building up on the rubble of Japan's nuclear disaster

Japan was struck by a massive earthquake on March 11, followed by a devastating tsunami that deluged many parts of Japan. Not only was the disaster colossal in terms of the human casualties (more than 10000 at last count), but it also damaged Japan’s nuclear reactors causing radiation leakage. As of this writing, the Fukushima […]

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India's Decision to Abstain from Vote on Libya's 'No-Fly Zone'

India's Decision to Abstain from Vote on Libya's 'No-Fly Zone'

India’s abstention on Security Council Resolution 1973 approving ‘no-fly zone’ over Libya and authorizing all necessary measures to protect civilians has disappointed India’s supporters and reinvigorated the critics. It is alleged that an ‘emerged’ India has still not come out of the diplomatic closet. It was expected that India would use the opportunity as non-permanent […]

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Has India Downloaded the 'Killer Apps'?

Has India Downloaded the 'Killer Apps'?

Harvard historian Niall Ferguson’s ‘six killer applications’ theory is the latest attempt to unravel the mystery of the decline of Western civilization. Ferguson in his recent work Civilization: The West and the Rest, chronicles the rise of the Western Civilization during the past 500 years and explains how China and the east may soon overtake […]

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India’s Bare Branches

India’s Bare Branches

Talk about India’s “demographic dividend” is now ubiquitous but as a new study reminds us, another population trend is also underway that will dim the country’s prospects: a rather pronounced deficit of females.

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India's Approach to Democracy Promotion

India has an inclination for strengthening democracy as opposed to spreading it. With the recent flurry of popular protests in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and other countries of the Middle East it looks like balancing support for democracy with strategic national interests has emerged as the central theme for contemporary global relations. The United States while expressing […]

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Budget Blues

Budget Blues

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s budget plan for the forthcoming fiscal year is more noteworthy for what it does not contain – realistic assumptions and a commitment to press ahead with critical items on the economic reform agenda.

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11 Receive Death Sentences in 2002 Gujarat Train Massacre

On Tuesday, nine years after 60 Hindu pilgrims were burnt alive when their train coach was set on fire, an Indian court in the Western state of Gujarat found 31 Muslims guilty of the crime.

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What Makes One Indian Enough to Write About India?*

What Makes One Indian Enough to Write About India?*

Recently there has been some heated discussion on who is ‘morally qualified’ to write about India. Socio-economic changes have made India the apple pie of global literary – fiction and non-fiction – circle. Patrick French’s India: A Portrait and Anand Giridharadas’s India Calling: An Intimate Portrait of a Nation’s Remaking have invited the ire of […]

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Has Manmohan Lost His Mojo?

Has Manmohan Lost His Mojo?

Just a few months ago, Manmohan Singh was being lauded by world statesmen and the international media as the very model of political leadership. Nowadays, increasingly beleaguered, he’s reduced to denying that he’s a lame duck or intends to resign from office.

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Tolstoy, Carlyle and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh

Tolstoy, Carlyle and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh

According to Leo Tolstoy, history shapes and determines leaders. In simple terms Tolstoy believed that a combination of several individual decisions, actions and coincidences impact the course of events where one particular man’s actions stand out. Providence allows a single individual to take charge and assume leadership. Contrary to Tolstoy’s theory Thomas Carlyle contended that […]

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