Last week, China’s anti-corruption campaign took a significant turn, though a largely overlooked one. The Supreme People’s Court released a statement accusing former Politburo Standing Committee member Zhou Yongkang, the highest-ranked official thus far implicated in China’s ongoing anti-corruption campaign, of having “trampled the law, damaged unity within ...
“It is good to swim in the waters of tradition but to sink in them is suicidal”, thus arose the voice of Mahatma Gandhi that drew scores of Indian women into the freedom struggle to battle along with men to attain what the nation had come to believe was a pressing imperative - ‘the British must...
India is celebrating the centenary of World War I with a sense of pride that its soldiers participated in expeditions to defend the British Empire. The call to participate in the war effort was given by no less than freedom fighters like Mahatma Gandhi and Bal Gangadhar Tilak with the hope that the colonial rulers would grant home rule under Dominion Status ...
Lucia Mouat, who was the correspondent of the Christian Science Monitor at the United Nations when I first met her, has a new book out on the eight men who have been Secretary-General, The United Nations’ Top Job: A close look at the work of eight Secretaries-General. Her timing is excellent, for an increasing number of people will want the essential backgro...
I had been wanting to interview Paul Craig Roberts for a long time already. For many years I have been following his writings and interviews and every time I read what he had to say I was hoping that one day I would have the privilege to interview him about the nature of the US deep state and the Empire. Recently, I emailed him and asked for such an intervie...
The United States and the European Union are preparing to end the war which they waged against Serbia in 1999. After having amputated it from Kosovo, they are now seeking to take Voïvodine. In order to do so, they are currently modifying its population, setting up a new team in power in neighbouring Croatia, and buying up all the Serbian...
Last month, some research scholars from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR) and NIMHANS in Bengaluru struck ‘work’, holding placards and forming human chains to express their ‘displeasure’ at the delay in receiving the hike in...
In a judgment with far reaching consequences for reservation politics in India, the Supreme Court on March 17 scrapped the UPA government’s March 2014 notification that included Jats in the Central List of Other Backward Classes (OBC) in nine States. In Ram Singh & Others vs Union of India (WP Civil No 274 of 2014), Justices Ranjan Gogoi and Rohinton Nariman...
The defence of a country is vital, particularly when surrounding countries claim parts of its territory. The situation is aggravated when an immediate neighbour engages in proxy war by facilitating infiltration of terrorists with the sole intention of carrying out acts for destabilization of the destination country. India faces such a situation and the need ...
Editor’s Note: This week, we revisit a Geopolitical Weekly first published in July 2014 that explored whether Russian President Vladimir Putin could hold on to power despite his miscalculations in Ukraine, a topic that returned to prominence with his recent temporary absence from public view. While Putin has since reappeared, the issues highlighted by his di...
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched his foreign policy initiatives to establish India’s strategic presence in the Indian Ocean with a five-day (March 10-14) visit to three littoral states - Seychelles, Mauritius, and Sri Lanka, all former British colonies. Modi’s stated objective was to strengthen India’s cultural ties with the three nations, and to...
India has of late woken up to realize the importance of oceans, particularly the one over which it has a commanding presence. Better late than never, Prime Minister Modi has made a humble beginning for integrating with countries in the Indian Ocean rim. While security in the region remains a major concern, another recipe for integration is the call for coope...
Piercing the corporate veil is a concept in US corporate law, whereby creditors and/or plaintiffs are able to pierce the veil of an insolvent corporation, and get at most or all of the assets of its shareholders. This is done through legal proceedings, and can result in a failure for the creditor/plaintiff depending on which State the suit is brought. Howeve...
We are now in the early phases of selecting the president of the United States. Vast amounts of money are being raised, plans are being laid, opposition research is underway and the first significant scandal has broken with the discovery that Hillary Clinton used a non-government email account for government business. Ahead of us is an extended series of pri...
As the chart below, downloaded from Wikipedia, shows, India is nowhere in the top ranks of the incidence of rape reported by the United Nations. The following paragraph spells out the situation:
“Adjusted for population growth over time, the annual rape rate in India has increased from 1.9 to 2.0 per 100,000 people over...
In recent weeks, we have been focusing on Greece, Germany, Ukraine and Russia. All are still burning issues. But in every case, readers have called my attention to what they see as an underlying and even defining dimension of all these issues - if not right now, then soon. That dimension is declining population and the impact it will have on all of these cou...
Many reasons have been provided for the dramatic plunge in the price of oil to about $60 per barrel (nearly half of what it was a year ago): slowing demand due to global economic stagnation; overproduction at shale fields in the United States; the decision of the Saudis and other Middle Eastern OPEC producers to maintain output at current levels...
Relations between India and Pakistan have seen many ups and downs with intermittent breaks in friendship and outbreaks of tensions at the border or infiltration of terrorists. The relationship between these two major economies in the region has stalled the development process in South Asia. New Delhi’s move to resume the stalled dialogue process has given a ...
The alleged killers of Boris Nemtsov are apprehended, and they are (a dramatic pause) some Muslims from Chechnya who allegedly desired to punish the politician for his Je suis Charlie position. There is no official report available yet, but this implausible version is being promoted in Moscow. What’s that, a poor man’s 9/11? Indeed the Russian politician’s a...
The world is eagerly watching the fulfillment of the Modi government’s assurances to its neighbourhood and to the developing world. And also the new emphasis in the country’s foreign policy of maintaining friendly relations with countries for attracting investments and boosting trade so as to make India a new growth engine for the world. India is also slated...
Within the past two weeks [mid-Feb - ed], a temporary deal to keep Greece in the eurozone was reached in Brussels, a cease-fire roadmap was agreed to in Minsk and Iranian negotiators advanced a potential nuclear deal in Geneva. Squadrons of diplomats have forestalled one geopolitical crisis after another. Yet it would be premature, even reckless, to assume...
Jammu & Kashmir is at a momentous crossroad. The coalition hammered out by the Peoples Democratic Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party after two months of negotiations, necessitated by the need to respect the largest voter turnout in the State’s history and bridge the regional divide created by that verdict, is an instance of the famed ‘million mutinies’ tha...
On Feb. 25, at a Cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India cleared the way for the creation of the proposed five-nation BRICS bank, the New Development Bank (NDB), which will mobilize resources for infrastructure projects, and provide short-term liquidity to emerging economies in case of payment crises. Modi’s Cabinet responded promptly ...
China’s ambition to further its interests in Sri Lanka has suffered a setback after people elected the common opposition candidate Maithripala Sirisena as President in preference to two-term President Mahinda Rajapaksa in the election held in January 2015. China is probably familiar with President Sirisena as he served as a senior minister and close aide...
“Yesterday, the devil came here. And it smells of sulfur still today…” - Hugo Chavez, after George Bush spoke at the UN, 20 September 2006
If Chavez were still with us and in attendance at the joint session of America’s congress addressed by the Israeli leader, he might have sniffed fire and brimstone along with the madness he identified in the American...
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is visiting the United States this week to speak to Congress on March 3. The Obama administration is upset that Speaker of the House John Boehner invited Netanyahu without consulting with the White House and charged Boehner with political grandstanding. Netanyahu said he was coming to warn the United States of the th...
This year’s budget comes amidst heightened expectations for something new, but the Modi government preferred to follow the roadmap declared in the previous budget that matches the BJP agenda declared in the party manifesto. The focus of this budget remains the same as the last budget with huge increase in allocations to transportation and energy...
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rime Minister Narendra Modi came to power with a massive mandate in May 2014. His mantra has been good governance and economic development. Given the massive scale of poverty in India - in spite of the impressive growth witnessed in the last decade – the path to economic salvation is complex and merits serious thought and policy initiatives. As Modi seeks...
The Greek government is currently locked in a life and death struggle with the elite which dominate the banks and political decision-making centers of the European Union. What are at stake are the livelihoods of 11 million Greek workers, employees and small business people and the viability of the European Union. If the ruling Syriza government capitulates t...
“So how do you find the budget?” ask anybody who is somebody and, in most cases, you will get a smile. The finance minister Arun Jaitley has earned loads of compliments from a vast array of commentators ranging from captains of industry to edit writers in pink papers.
Look closer, however, and you will find that the smile, in most cases, is a forced one and...
The Union Budget has pushed forward the Modi government’s agenda of creating a climate of ease for doing business and investment with the intention of implementing the Prime Minister’s pet projects, viz., Make in India, Skill India, Digital India and Swachh...
The Modi Government has drawn up a roadmap for boosting public investments in infrastructure, facilitating ambitious programmes like Make in India, Green India, Skill India and as well as providing safety nets for the poor and the common man, despite the “squeeze” in the...