It’s an icy-cold December morning at the Dochula Pass in western Bhutan, about an hour’s drive north of the capital, Thimphu near a ridge in the lower Himalayas. The royal family of this tiny mountain nation is about to …
In 1991, Manmohan Singh was finance minister of a struggling, fractious government that was running out of money and ideas. Under pressure from international lenders, he championed a sweeping program of economic reform that took …
The man known as “Kishenji” was chief ideologue, spokesman and military strategist for India’s Naxals, who have been waging a violent Maoist insurgency against the Indian state for decades. He was killed by Indian security forces …
India’s Parliament is in the middle of a big political brawl over the issue of fully opening up its vast retail sector to foreign investors. It started last week, when the Cabinet approved a plan to open “multibrand retail” (i.e., supermarkets and stores that sell a variety of branded products) to 51% ownership, a move that has …
The grandly named “Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission” submitted its final report to Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa yesterday. The document is meant to account for the failure of a 2002 ceasefire and the events leading up to the end of the country’s 26-year-long war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil …
With Tunisian elections just completed, Egypt’s parliamentary elections coming up and Libya veering into a dark new period, observers of the Arab Spring are wondering what will become of these revolutions once the euphoria subsides and the struggle over democracy grows apace.
There is one corner of South Asia where these questions …
When Pakistan granted India “most favored nation” (MFN) trading status yesterday (India did the same in 1995), Reuters called it “a major breakthrough that could bolster efforts to improve relations between the nuclear-armed rivals.” Some Indian officials agreed:
“It’s a very powerful step, and a welcome step in the right
…
In August 2010, against the backdrop of last year’s fierce stone-pelting protests in Kashmir, I asked Omar Abdullah, the chief minister of the Indian state of Jammu & Kashmir, about one of the protestors’ demands: the repeal of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), a controversial law that gives Indian troops broad protection …
In India mass, non-violent protest is not only a founding national principle; it is a highly developed art form. Any journalist working here must quickly figure out the difference between a dharna (sit-down protest) and a bandh (a general strike), and learn the peculiar conventions of the “fast unto death”: every hunger strike must …
Indian policy-makers have called a truce to end an escalating political battle over how it measures poverty. In doing so, India may have begun a radical new experiment in giving subsidies to the poor.
India draws its poverty line based on how much people spend — not how much they earn. There are certainly other ways of measuring …
With at least 5.5 million people affected by flooding in Pakistan and 2 million in India, monsoon floods on the Subcontinent sometimes seem like a grim annual ritual. But on a recent visit to Bihar, I found some surprising evidence that there are simple ways to reduce the vulnerability of even the poorest communities.
Rameshesh, a …
The U.S. State Department announced yesterday that it had “designated the Indian Mujahideen as a Foreign Terrorist Organization,” a decision that makes it illegal under U.S. law to provide material support or resources to the group, and freezes all its assets in the U.S. The new designation may not, by itself, make much difference in …
Ten people were killed and 61 injured by a bomb blast inside the Delhi High Court Complex in the capital on Wednesday morning. The militant group Harkat ul Jihad al Islami (HuJI) took responsibility for the blasts in an email sent to several Indian news organizations. The attack seemed to have been calculated to maximize the loss of …