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 […]
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 […]
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.
Continuing coverage on the Rise of State-sponsored Capitalism” href=”http://globaleconomy.foreignpolicyblogs.com/2009/05/09/the-rise-of-state-sponsored-capitalism/” target=”_blank”>I’ve written about frequently here in my Global Markets blog — namely the Chinese state’s spin on capitalism. Though there were many critics early on — and still are in many quarters — who argued that China’s state-managed version of capitalism was unsustainable, it seems the long-term sustainability of so-called ‘State Capitalism‘ has been proven, and is even gathering steam in unlikely places — India, Cuba, Vietnam and the Middle-East to name a few — with great success. It’s a trend that Western financial centers should be attuned to, nor should it be dismissed as the global financial architecture continues to evolve following the global financial crisis.
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 […]
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.
TAPI Signatories in Ashgabat The Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline or TAPI is a 1,680 km (1,050 m) natural gas line originating in the Daulatabad gas fields in southeastern Turkmenistan. It crosses Afghanistan and continues on through Pakistan ending in Fazilka, a northwestern Indian city close to the India-Pakistan border. TAPI is one of the largest pipelines in […]
In his budget proposal for 2012, President Obama has proposed $3.1 billion in aid to Pakistan. The aid is spread across various parts and will be provided partly under the five year Kerry-Lugar-Berman initiative and Oversees Contingency Operations (OCO). This proposal comes even as the two countries stand-off over the Raymond Davis affair and the […]
by Mira Kamdar The Green Revolution that transformed agriculture in the last century was an American invention. It began in 1944 with a project sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation in Mexico. Dr. Norman Borlaug, a plant geneticist from Minnesota, was sponsored by the Foundation to assist in breeding new plant hybrids that would boost yields […]
Jayant Sinha and Ashutosh Varshney have in an interesting article, contented that “both in its rot and heady dynamism, India is beginning to resemble America’s Gilded Age (1865-1900).” The article in Financial Times, titled “It is time for India to reign in its robber barrons”, Sinha and Varshney question the possibility of India’s transition from […]
One of the most difficult challenges facing the Indian state has been the inability to deliver resources to where needs exist. Thousands go hunger while food grains rot in storage facilities, enrolment rates are dismally low in Government schools even after education has become a fundamental right, medical facilities for rural population are lacking even […]
President Obama’s comment that “India is not simply emerging but has emerged” charmed his Indian audience. Was President Obama’s assessment rhetorical or was he making a valid appraisal? India’s record on indices of democratic governance, economic growth and socio-political stability are encouraging if not exquisite. Yet power implies a relational aspect which makes India’s foreign […]
Overall, observing today’s India evokes an alternating mixture of despair and heady optimism. At the face of it, her problems seem insurmountable and yet, incredibly, her citizens are rushing forward with a glint in their eye that suggests that they know where they want to be – and they’ll figure out a way to get there.
Short-term measures will not address the roots of India’s food crisis. Long in the making, the real problems extend far beyond a spike in spot prices caused by variable weather and their resolution will require much more than changes in the Cabinet lineup.
The Oxford English Dictionary defines “pogrom” as “an organized massacre of a particular ethnic group”. By this definition, although there have been hundreds of religious riots in independent India, there have been only two pogroms: that directed against Sikhs in Delhi in 1984, and that directed against the Muslims of south Gujarat in 2002. Ramachandra […]