Formally speaking, the level of abstention during the Presidential election in Venezuela does not allow us to validate the democratic character of the victory of Nicolás Maduro. However, the amount of participation is easily sufficient, in the middle of an economic war, to illustrate popular support for national institutions. Indeed, far more than the Chàvis...
If the present ruling party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, is voted back to power in 2019, then, according to former Mumbai top cop, Julio Ribeiro, “I should be prepared for second class citizenship that denies top jobs like that of a judge in the Supreme Court, a governor of a state, the chief of defence staff or the intelligence bureau”. This harsh denunciat...
The current Rohingya crisis that has seized global eyeballs is a self-invited calamity in which Rohingya militants attacked 30 police posts and an army base in Myanmar in August 2017, and simultaneously unleashed a reign of terror on their mild mannered Hindu neighbours. Yet it has taken the otherwise in-your-face Amnesty International nine months to finally...
A recent upsurge in insurgent activity in Kashmir likely explains Pakistani and Chinese reluctance to crackdown on internationally designated militant Hafez Saeed and the network of groups that he heads. So does the fact that Mr. Saeed and Lashkar-e-Taiba, an outlawed, India-focused ultra-conservative Sunni Muslim group widely seen as one of South Asia’s dea...
Delhi Archbishop Anil Couto’s letter to Catholics dated May 8, 2019, to “pray for democracy” and exhorting his flock to “defeat Hindu forces” is a battle cry that Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his party should take to heart very closely. Archbishop Couto is a representative of the most undemocratic organisation in the world and the agent of an alien natio...
Though Uttarakhand had 21,966 protests, the highest number in the year 2016, it was Tamil Nadu with a score of 20,450 protests - at the rate of 47 protests a day - that caught the national attention. The reason was simple: the protests in Tamil Nadu were massive, prolonged and in many cases spontaneous. Of course, one way of looking at it was as vibrant demo...
Ousted Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif kicked up a storm when he earlier this month seemingly admitted that Pakistan had supported militants who attacked multiple targets in Mumbai in 2008, killing 166 people. Mr. Sharif’s admission, which he has since tried to walk back, put a finger on Pakistan’s controversial policy of selective support of militant ...
Conventional wisdom has it that China stands to benefit from the US withdrawal from the 2015 international nuclear agreement with Iran, particularly if major European companies feel that the risk of running afoul of US secondary sanctions is too high. In doing so, China would draw on lessons learnt from its approach to the sanctions regime against Iran prior...
The recent revelations of financial irregularities at Tirupathi Tirumala, the abode of Lord Venkateswara is indeed troubling. Dr. A.V. Ramana Dikshitulu, the former chief priest, who has served the temple for more than twenty years, has come out with a series of stunning allegations that has literally thrown the Tirupathi Tirumala Devasthanam (TTD) Board as ...
In the past, Myanmar and Bangladesh had bilaterally handled the Rohingya issue, making pragmatic compromises. However, the results were temporary as Myanmar never addressed the core issue of Rohingya citizenship status. However, after Rohingyas refugees figures swelled to nearly a million in Bangladesh in 2017, it placed a heavy economic and administrative b...
Rohingya hopes were kindled when the NLD decided to participate in the 2015 elections. However, Aung San Suu Kyi’s politically loaded silence on the Thein Sein government’s disenfranchisement of Muslims prior to the 2015 elections disappointed Muslims including Rohingyas. For the first time, the NLD did not field any Muslim candidate in the election. It ind...
The terms ethnicity, identity and nationality are generally understood to mean the following: Ethnicity: It is related to membership of a particular racial, national, or cultural group and observance of that group’s customs, beliefs and language. Identity: The Cambridge English Dictionary defines identity as related to a person or the qualities of a person o...
In addition to racial prejudice, even sheer plagiarism can lead the Nobel Committee to ill-conceived decisions, as illustrated by the life of Professor E.C. George Sudarshan, the great India-born theoretical physicist, who breathed his last on May 14 at his Texas residence in the United States. Sudarshan had published his theory, known as “Sudarshan-Glauber ...
Saudi Arabia’s bitter rivalry with Iran has spilled onto Asian soccer pitches with the newly created South West Asian Football Federation (SWAFF) reflecting the kingdom’s bid for regional hegemony, including domination of soccer. Saudi Arabia’s most recent victory on the pitch was evident in the absence in SWAFF, formed by a merger of the West Asian and Sout...
The betrayal of the Pakistan People’s Party (founded by the father of Benazir Bhutto as a Socialist Party similar to PASOK in Greece), former Prime Minister hanged to death by Military dictator Ziaul Haq, was the biggest crime of all. This party no longer represents the workers and peasants of Pakistan; rather it has become a tool in the hands of one faction...
A new Pashtun movement has erupted in Pakistan, mobilizing hundreds-of-thousands of people across the country, with tens-of-thousands attending its public meetings. The state apparatus and the entire ruling class, including all establishment political parties, are trembling at the sight of this huge movement, which originated from the most backward areas of ...
In an interview with Russia Today on the crisis in Europe, French politician Marine Le Pen said, “Immigration is an organised replacement of our population. This threatens our very survival”. Syria’s Grand Mufti, Sheikh Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun, supports New Delhi’s view that Rohingyas are a security threat and not a religious problem. Yet, the Supreme...
While political pundits and politicians alike in Washington have been busy as of late in making predictions about imminent crisis in the Middle East between Israel and Iran, reflecting equally which side the US will stand by if a war does break out between the two rivals, a backdoor channel of diplomacy, with Russia providing the crucial support, has also be...
The genetic and cultural similarities between people of West Asia and India can be accounted for by some of the migrations mentioned by Krishna in Mahabharata (2-14). The context was post-Jarāsandha and Krishna suggesting to Yudhishtira to conduct Rajasuya yajna. Krishna narrates the series of troubles faced by his clan (Yadava – Bhojas) on account of Jarāsa...
The Gulf crisis that pits a United Arab Emirates-Saudi-led alliance against Qatar is escalating in discreet but no less worrisome ways that effect major third-party commercial interests and could increase international pressure for a resolution of the dispute. In a major shift away from Saudi and UAE restraint in attempting to force the international communi...
If the Joint Opposition (JO) and the pro-Rajapaksa Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) had hoped to break up the ruling coalition through the No Confidence Motion (NCM) against Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, the gambit failed. The motion could secure only 78 votes against 122 members who opposed it. Twenty six MPs apparently could not make up their mind...
With US President Donald J. Trump scheduled to announce whether he will uphold the international community’s nuclear agreement on Iran [since reneged – ed] and Iraqi elections slated for the same day, May 12 is gearing up to be a day that could shape the future of the Middle East. May 12’s significance lies in what it will mean for the immediate course of th...
Once again the liberal world order’s fairytales about Putin and bad old Russia seem to be unravelling. Prime Minister Theresa May’s “Thatcheresque” warnings to Russia’s president, the Keystone Cops and #hashtags #Novichok and #Skripal, and the reality of chemical warfare are blowing up in Her Majesty’s face as I type this. Meanwhile, billionaire western olig...
More than a century ago, in one of the early editions of Advances in Agronomy, the magnum opus of agricultural science, popularly known as the “Bible of Agricultural Science”, Roy W. Simonson, a distinguished soil scientist, writing a chapter entitled “Concept of Soil”, noted “Someone has said that the fabric of human life is woven on earthen looms – it ever...
Subtle shifts in Chinese energy imports suggest that China may be able to exert influence in the Middle East in alternative and subtle ways that do not involve military or overt economic pressure. The shifts involve greater dependency of the Gulf states on oil and gas exports to China, the world’s largest importer, at a time that the People’s Republic has be...
In the clearest sign to date, EU Ambassadors to Beijing have just released a document critical of China’s vast Belt, Road Initiative or New Economic Silk Road infrastructure project. All EU ambassadors excepting Hungary signed off on the paper in a declaration of growing EU opposition to what is arguably the most promising economic project in the past centur...
The recently concluded 25th Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) summit in London saw the participation of fifty three countries. Of these, only two, Rwanda and Mozambique, do not have a colonial past or a constitutional link to Britain. All Commonwealth members avow the leadership of the British royals. This biennial gathering of leaders from...
Sri Lanka on independence had a degree of unity, a vision and was led by men who were held in high esteem by the citizens. They established a free healthcare, free education and social activity geared to the betterment of the people who had suffered 400 years of colonialism. They survived 400 years of colonialism by practicing social cohesion under the guida...
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s investment of $1 billion and option to pump a further $480 million into Richard Branson’s ventures in space, confirmed during the prince’s recent visit to the United States, was more than just another headline-grabbing move. By focusing on space sciences, long a field rejected by ultra-conservative Islamic scholars, s...
A wonderful, joyful day, a jubilant summit! On the bloody 38th parallel, for the first time in many years, the two Koreans met, the leaders of the two Korean states. There were affable smiles and a spontaneous brief and unscripted visit of the southern president to the northern country, and then the northern one – to the southern one. Kim led his colleague o...
In an assessment submitted soon after the Bharatiya Janata Party’s resounding victory in the Uttar Pradesh elections of 2017, the now controversial Cambridge Analytica observed that the Congress party needs emphatic wins in Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh to send out a clear message of change to the rest of India, giving it “winning momentum” in t...