But then…
So what if you are one of the top leaders of one of India’s largest underground Maoist party. You still need to get in touch with the wife. In an interview with Romita and Aveek Datta, Mint’s intrepid reporters, Communist Party of India (Maoist) politburo member Koteshwar Rao says:
My wife Maina is now at [...]
What do you with a problem like Gyanendra?
From Nepal comes news of an royal billing dispute. After doing away with the monarchy and nationalising many of the royal assets—including the main royal palace—the government of the new republic wants King Gyanendra to cough up payment for the electricity the royal family used while he was [...]
And what that means for the Communist Party’s hold on power
Reviewing Sushan Shirk’s Fragile Superpower, TCA Srinivasa-raghavan mentions the familiar argument about the lack of political safety valves in China. (linkthanks Chandrasekaran Balakrishnan)
…the Chinese leadership no longer has to fear the foreign devil who speaks English; it has to fear the average Chinaman who does [...]
Not respect for the office of Prime Minister. Not even courtesy
The Communists didn’t even wait for the Prime Minister to come back from his trip to Toyako, where he is meeting G8 leaders. They just pulled the rug. And that should be the least bit surprising. A bunch of people who never cared about India’s [...]
Nepal is Nepal, and India is, well, India
“If the Indian Maoists have something to learn from their Nepali comrades,” Siddharth Varadarajan argues, “the same is true of the Indian establishment as well. While Nepal’s erstwhile ruling parties are building peace with their Maoists, India is stuck with the disastrous Salwa Judum.”
Now the use of Salwa [...]
New dogs, old tricks
Some commentators have characterised the electoral performance of the Maoists in Nepal’s constituent assembly elections as catching India by surprise. That’s not entirely incorrect. Though polls have a tendency to get pundits wrong, election results surprised most people, including the Maoists themselves.
Does this mean India should be more worried about its [...]
The Hindu returns to mislead, obfuscate and yes, bat for Beijing
As expected, the The Hindu has published an entirely one-sided editorial supporting Beijing and condemning the Dalai Lama and the Tibetans. Why it took so long to come might not even be a mystery, in this age of instantaneous international communications, considering that Beijing decided [...]
Perfection is not a pre-requisite for expressing concerns over China’s treatment of Tibetans
M K Bhadrakumar’s op-ed in The Hindu criticising India’s response to China’s handling of the Tibetan protests is bizarre. It is bizarre because despite being a former diplomat, he appears to argue that foreign policies ought to be free of double (or multiple) [...]
The Indian home minister doesn’t understand the nature of the problem
Just how does Shivraj Patil justify his government’s underperformance over handling the Naxalite insurgency? Well, by understating the threat. Don’t look at 10 states and 180 districts that form the ‘red corridor’, he told parliament. For only 300 of the 14,000 police stations in the [...]
Some opinions just can’t make it to the People’s Daily of Chennai
The Beijing correspondent of The Hindu can hardly be classified as a critic of the People’s Republic. But when Pallavi Aiyar wrote a piece that compared India and China that showed the latter in rather unfavourable light, she had to publish it in Asia [...]
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