NEW DELHI: India and Pakistan are enjoying one of the better periods in their turbulent relationship. Recent months have witnessed no terrorist incidents, no escalating rhetoric, and no diplomatic flashpoints. Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari (...)
NEW DELHI: April might be the cruelest month, but, for India's major political parties this year, March was fairly brutal. On March 6, following an American-style “Super Tuesday” of its own, India announced the results of five state assembly (...)
LAHORE/NEW DELHI: A subtle shift may be occurring in one of the world's longest-standing and most intractable conflicts — the dispute between India and Pakistan over Kashmir. Increasingly, it seems, Pakistanis are questioning what the Kashmir (...)
NEW DELHI: India ended 2011 amid political chaos, as the much-awaited “Lokpal Bill,” aimed at creating a strong, independent anti-corruption agency, collapsed amid a welter of recrimination in the parliament's upper house, after having passed the (...)
NEW DELHI: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's recent visit to Myanmar (Burma), noted largely for a memorable photo opportunity with a wan but smiling Aung San Suu Kyi, signaled a significant change in the geopolitics surrounding a land that has (...)
NEW DELHI: The recent Indian-Italian bilateral dialogue, held in Milan on November 7, at a time when Italy was reeling from the euro crisis and Silvio Berlusconi's impending political demise, offered a fraught reminder of the potential, and the (...)
NEW DELHI: When the Commonwealth heads of government meet in Australia later this month, one prominent leader is almost certain to be conspicuously absent: India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. India is a strong backer of the association of former (...)
NEW DELHI: India is no stranger to protest movements, hunger strikes, and the mass mobilization of citizens for a popular cause. But the recent fast by the Gandhian leader Anna Hazare, culminating in an extraordinary Saturday session of Parliament (...)
NEW DELHI: US President Barack Obama's announcement of the start of American troop withdrawals from Afghanistan, and his administration's increasing emphasis on reconciliation with the Taliban, have been studied attentively in one capital that has a (...)
NEW DELHI: The recent India-Africa summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, at which India's government pledged $5 billion in aid to African countries, drew attention to a largely overlooked phenomenon — India's emergence as a source, rather than a (...)
NEW DELHI: India-Pakistan relations — a challenge at the best of times, and in the doldrums since the terrorist attacks on Mumbai of November 2008 – received an unexpected boost last month from an unlikely source: cricket. When the two countries (...)
NEW DELHI: The recent ouster of the Nobel Prize-winning Bangladeshi economist Mohammed Yunus as managing director of the Grameen Bank, which blazed a trail for microfinance in developing countries, has thrown a spotlight on the crisis engulfing a (...)
NEW DELHI: With the Nobel Peace Prize presented this month in the absence of this year's laureate, the imprisoned Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, it might be wise to think of a man who never won the prize: Mahatma Gandhi. Despite that omission, there (...)
NEW DELHI: As stage-managed elections ratify the consequences of three decades of military rule in Burma, the perspective from its neighbor India may help explain why there is continued international acceptance of the country's long-ruling (...)
NEW DELHI: A recent court ruling has revealed India's strengths and limitations as it grapples with its transformation from a land handcuffed to history — ever since the Partition of 1947, which carved Pakistan out of its stooped shoulders — into a (...)
NEW DELHI: The target date for fulfilling the Millennium Development Goals is 2015, and the world knows it is not on course to meet those goals. So world leaders are set to gather at the United Nations to undertake a comprehensive review, with the (...)
NEW DELHI: As the world economy begins to recover, Indians are looking back with particular satisfaction at how they coped with the recent crisis. Despite an unprecedented global recession, India remained the second fastest growing economy in the (...)
NEW DELHI: In July, I was among 30 men and women from around the world — government ministers, bureaucrats, technologists, and strategic thinkers — who gathered at the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) in Geneva to discuss how broadband (...)
NEW DELHI: What international association brings together 18 countries straddling three continents thousands of miles apart, united solely by their sharing of a common body of water?
That is a quiz question likely to stump the most devoted (...)
NEW DELHI: A month after they first queued to vote in India's mammoth general election, the country's voters will learn the outcome on May 16. The election, staggered over five phases - involving five polling days over four weeks, rather than one (...)
KERALA, INDIA: Beginning this month, the largest exercise of the democratic franchise in history will take place, as Indian voters head to the polls to elect a new national parliament. They have done this 14 times since India gained its (...)
NEW DELHI: With the world's most developed economies reeling under the incubus of what is already being called the Great Recession, India at the beginning of the year took stock and issued a revised estimate for GDP growth in the 2008-2009 fiscal (...)
Indians haven't often had much to root for at the Oscars, Hollywood's annual celebration of cinematic success. Only two Indian movies have been nominated in the Best Foreign Language Film category in the last 50 years, and neither won.
So Indians (...)
NEW DELHI: As Israeli planes and tanks exact a heavy toll on Gaza, India's leaders and strategic thinkers have been watching with an unusual degree of interest - and some empathy.
India's government has, no surprise, joined the rest of the world (...)
NEW DELHI: The fallout from the terror attacks in Mumbai last week has already shaken India. Deep and sustained anger across the country - at its demonstrated vulnerability to terror and at the multiple institutional failures that allowed such loss (...)