The over-hyped green revolution of the late 1960s introduced varieties of dwarf rice and wheat in northern India, with a cocktail of chemical fertilisers and pesticides that sucked up ground water and gradually made it unfit for drinking as the chemicals leached into the soil and water. State-sponsored propaganda about “miraculous yields” extended the...
A close read of the agreement between the United Arab Emirates and Israel suggests that the Jewish state has won far more than diplomatic recognition. It won acknowledgement of its claim to historic Jewish rights. By the same token, the UAE has received a significant boost to project itself as a leader in inter-faith dialogue. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin...
Over the last forty years of Afghanistan’s tragic military history (the war in the 1980s, the civil war in the 1990s and the US occupation since 2001), opium has always played a role in the fate of the country. The sad irony is that Afghanistan’s unique ecology coupled with US military policy in the region has turned the landlocked country into the world’s f...
In recent years, Australia has established increasingly close economic relations with China yet, at the same time, it relies on a strategic alliance with the United States being the guarantor of its defense capability. But Australia’s growing dependence on trade with China is having an increasing impact on foreign policy. Canberra is finding it difficult to ...
In today’s world, information has been identified as the biggest asset; it is used by nations to create beneficial narratives on the one hand and dissension within inimical domains on the other. Authoritarian regimes are masters in the use and misuse of information. This is because they can ensure full internal secrecy and simultaneously apply underhand mean...
Few stories in recent years more clearly illustrate the sorry decline in western media standards than the coverage currently being given to the illness of Russian dissident politician Alexei Navalny. Mr. Navalny is at most a minor irritant to the ruling Russian politicians. At the last election he polled less than 2% of the popular vote. In most western coun...
Immunization is amongst the most cost-effective global public health measures to date that helps save an estimated 2 to 3 million lives every year. As a direct result of global immunization policies, the world is close to eradicating polio and global deaths from measles declined 73 per cent during 2000–2018. However, this has been disrupted by the emergence ...
No US Presidency is complete without the White House South Lawn peace-making ceremony for Jews and Arabs. The first was Jimmy Carter raining goodwill upon Begin and Sadat; then it was Bill Clinton pushing Arafat and Rabin together; and now we have Donald Trump beaming proudly at Bibi and ABZ (Abdullah bin Zayed of UAE) as they sit before him. It is an excell...
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimates that globally One billion (1) children are at risk of falling behind due to school closures caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Schools in countries that have enforced school closures have implemented distance learning programs in order to keep children within the ambit of the formal education system....
Following the carnage at Chauri Chaura on February 4, 1922, Gandhi abruptly called off the Non-cooperation Movement. However, the movement was a mere appendage, indeed a fig-leaf for the Khilafat Movement. As the objectives of the Khilafat Movement had not been met, it continued without the pretensions of the Non-cooperation Movement. To recapitulate, the or...
In this article, the author seeks to draw our attention to a fact that is difficult for Westerners to conceive of: the American people are experiencing a crisis of civilization. They are so deeply divided that the presidential election is not just about electing a leader, but about determining what the country (empire or nation?) should be. Neither side is c...
The 1933 Nobel Prize in Physics was jointly given to the Austrian-Irish physicist Erwin Schrodinger and British physicist Paul Dirac “for the discovery of new productive forms of atomic theory”. This great scientific recognition has relevance to India’s philosophy of Vedanta, as stated in the Upanishads. It is fascinating to know what some of the great...
The United Arab Emirates’ bold recognition of Israel, earning it valuable brownie points in the West, has come at a cost: a blow to its efforts to earn religious soft power in the Muslim world. The setback raises questions about the UAE’s strategy of co-opting prominent Muslim scholars with financial incentives to project the Gulf state as a model of toleran...
Lt. Gen. Asim Saleem Bajwa reached a very high rank in the Pakistan Army, just one step short of being the Chief. One mostly expects a person reaching such heights to be dedicated to the cause of his nation. Sadly for Pakistan, Gen. Bajwa has exhibited no such virtues and instead stands exposed as a dishonest, corrupt and covetous man who has repeatedly sold...
As expected the Rajapaksas bounced back to power with all guns blazing, with their Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) party by winning 145 seats, 25 seats more than their own forecast. With the SLPP-led Sri Lanka Nidahas Podujana Permauna (SLPNS)’s three minor partners chipping in 6 seats, the SLPP now commands two-thirds majority in the 225-member parliamen...
Sonia Gandhi’s consistency and determination are admirable. A firm believer in dynasty as a legitimizing principle in politics, she first made her son the party vice-president in January 2013, thus indicating her intent, and in December 2017, despite a dismal performance in the 2014 general elections, anointed him as Congress president. This...
The Khilafat Movement was punctuated by numerous incidents of violence. A grossly under-estimated list of definite Muslim rioting from 1919-1922 during the Movement is as follows: Nellore (September 22, 1919), Muthupet, Tanjore (May 1920), Madras (May 1920), Sukkur, Sind (May 29, 1920), Kachagarhi, NWFP (July 8, 1920), Kasur, Punjab (August 25, 1920), Pilib...
Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson is the latest Western leader to wildly jump on the bandwagon claiming that Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny was poisoned, and by implication insinuating the Kremlin had a sinister hand in it. “The poisoning of Alexei Navalny shocked the world,” asserted Johnson on Twitter, who went on to call for a “transparent ...
Earlier this month [August-ed.], the United States banned the Chinese government-run Xinjiang Production Construction Core (XPCC), a paramilitary and business organization, and two of its top officials for depriving basic rights to Uyghur people working in their organisation. The action was taken under the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act passed by the United ...
In recent days, a protest movement in Libya has been growing, and with each passing day, it has been spreading to an ever increasing number of towns and cities in this country, devastated by the ongoing civil war. Nine years since the overthrow of former Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi, which Western powers, including the US, were actively involved in, a ...
For the past months the Peoples’ Republic of China has been subject to one after the other devastating shocks to its agriculture sector. A deadly outbreak of African Swine Fever that halved China’s huge pig herds in 2019, was followed by infestation from a plague of fall armyworms (FAW) which reached China in December, 2018 and now threaten China’s corn belt...
The decision by the UAE to establish diplomatic relations with Israel keeps a negotiated solution with Palestine on life support. There is no indication that forging relations with Israel will be more successful in nudging the Jewish state towards peace with Palestine on mutually acceptable terms than the failed formula of offering Arab recognition in exchan...
One of the objectives of the Euromaidan coup (Ukraine, 2013-14) was to cut the Silk Road in Europe. China reacted by changing its route and passing it through Belarus. From then on, Minsk tried to protect itself from the same destabilization by pursuing a more balanced policy towards the West, participating in military manoeuvres with Moscow and agreeing to ...
Poetry has been described as the spontaneous outburst of innermost feeling. But poetry that seeps into the collective consciousness of a people also reflects their psyche and influences behaviour. Bankim’s Vande Mataram extols the country of residence not as a mere piece of land but as a Divine Mother to be revered and worshipped by her children. Once the vi...
Rare polling of public opinion in Saudi Arabia suggests that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman may be more sensitive to domestic public opinion on foreign policy issues such as Palestine than he lets on. The polling also indicates that a substantial number of Saudis is empathetic to protest as a vehicle for political change. The poll conducted on behalf of t...
We continue to track a series of scandals related to the fact that a number of NGOs that were involved in the protection of “comfort women”, as it turned out, spent the money on promoting themselves and their leaders, and not on the needs of the victim grandmothers they were commissioned to help. In general, after the country’s president voiced his position...
Unfettered Chinese support for Saudi Arabia’s so far peaceful nuclear energy program risks fueling a burgeoning Middle East arms race amid concerns that the 2015 Iranian nuclear agreement is all but dead, Turkey suggesting it has the right to develop nuclear weapons, and Israel certain to not remain idle if nuclear proliferation becomes the name of the game....
Zohnerism is a word I have recently added to my lexicon. The Urban Dictionary defines it as the use of scientific fact for an unrelated false conclusion where scientific fact itself is something that is undeniably true and cannot be argued with or challenged on any grounds known to man. The word was coined after a boy, Nathan Zohner, described water in scien...
Voter behaviour is not really so complicated. I once even took a course in it; about all that I can remember is that the “incumbent and name recognition is all that really matters” in getting re-elected, especially for a US President. Regardless of who is the pick for vice president, or whether or not Joe Biden is a Republican at heart with a bad case of...
A split in the Congress party seems inevitable. Despite formal genuflections before the Rae Bareli MP, Sonia Gandhi is now only an interim president and neither offspring is acceptable as future president. Indeed, the Congress Working Committee meeting of August 24, 2020, called to address an explosive letter by 23 top leaders, could not quash the dissent. T...