Post-war Sri Lanka can’t do without strong bilateral ties with India Western countries are considering blocking an US$1.9 billion IMF load to Sri Lanka, not least due to pressure from human rights groups and Tamil diaspora groups. The Sri Lankan government, whose public finances and balance of payments are under pressure both due to the ...
Like Indian prime minister, Like US president If the Indian prime minister was assured that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are in “safe hands for now”, the US president “feels” confident that they are. Chidanand Rajghatta drew attention to this exchange at President Obama’s 100-days-in-office press conference. Chuck Todd: Thank you, Mr. President. I want to move ...
Reading the tense US officials, we are told, “are continuing to press Pakistan to accept more American trainers, an issue likely to come up in the meetings next week.” Pakistan has balked, American officials said, because it does not want a large American presence in its country. “There’s a red line about our advisers and ...
India’s risks go up when US media invokes nuclear Rambos TIME magazine reports: The prospect of turmoil in Pakistan sends shivers up the spines of those U.S. officials charged with keeping tabs on foreign nuclear weapons. Pakistan is thought to possess about 100 — the U.S. isn’t sure of the total, and may not know ...
Where India yields, China will step in. Quite often, the alarm and indignation comes from a sense of entitlement. Surely, the argument goes, India’s size and geographical location entitles it to a pre-eminent maritime status in the Indian Ocean, so how dare China intrude and construct a “string of pearls” around India? To be sure, ...
How the LTTE damaged the Sri Lankan Tamil cause More than a generation has grown up without knowing what the Indian intervention in Sri Lanka in 1987 was all about. Shekhar Gupta does well to remind us just why there is no need to shed any tears for the LTTE: Bipin Joshi and I had ...
India’s (and the world’s) priority should be to avert a humanitarian disaster If the fate of the hapless Tamil civilians is the world’s principal consideration with regard to the war in Sri Lanka, then it stands to reason that that war itself must come to an end as soon as possible. It is unrealistic to ...
The rational school operators of Uttar Pradesh Just like over nine out of ten families in Karnataka, many school operators in Uttar Pradesh demonstrated that they are rational actors. If the Indian government has announced that it will give Rs 325 crores over the five years to madrassas (which, among others, means "an honorarium of ...
China, Arunachal Pradesh and the politics of an ADB loan And now it is at the Asian Development Bank (ADB). A few days ago Financial Times reported that China had used procedure to delay the approval of ADB’s new multi-year financing plan for India. Because a small part of it, around $60 million, is for ...
Raw nerves A Pakistani newspaper publishes an open letter by a retired Indian army officer—that doesn’t say anything that many Pakistani commentators are not already saying—and you witness some very interesting reactions. First, several people, including retired Pakistani army officers, write to the editor, defending their army and shooting the Indian messenger. For how dare ...