Plight of the persecuted Hindus in Pakistan -
Ravi Shankar, NewIndianExpress
Ifrah Siddique is student of St. Anthony School in Lahore, Pakistan. At the Youth Talent Festival 2012, she delivered an impassioned speech on the subject of the Rights of Minorities in Pakistan. An excerpt. “The fact is that there are no minority rights in Pakistan. From Shantinagar to Gojra, the history of this land is full of the murders of the minorities at the heads of the self-proclaimed righteous guardians of religious boundaries. In a country where sectarian terrorism consumed thousands of lives...
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A myth that can devastate Tibet -
Maura Moynihan, Rangzen
The recent Chinese military incursion into Ladakh was a painful reminder of the cost of losing Tibet. And this week Chinese officials announced plans to demolish what remains of Lhasa, Tibet’s ancient capital. Despite its inclusion in UNESCO’s World Heritage List, Lhasa is a symbol of Tibetan nationalism, and China’s Politburo has determined that Tibetan culture, religion and identity must be exterminated to ensure “stability.” On May 8th, the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington...
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The unreliable source -
Hartosh Singh Bal, Open
Over the past week, as the drama over the resignations of Ashwani Kumar and Pawan Kumar Bansal was being played out in TV studios, anchors peering at their text messages were quick to turn the flow of information into ‘breaking news’ on the screen. But for much of the time there was no news to break, and this hurry to get information out, whatever its veracity, meant that it was ‘sources’ and not anchors who were driving TV coverage and the spin being put on events.
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Caste as social capital -
S Gurumurthy, Business Line
Decades ago, an elderly gentleman speaking at the Gandhi Peace Foundation in Delhi, asked, “What is it that keeps the country down”? A young man responded: “Undoubtedly caste. It has kept society backward”. The speaker replied, “may be”. He paused for a moment and said “may not be”. The young man angrily asked him to explain his “may-not-be” theory. The speaker calmly mentioned just one fact that shocked the audience. He said, “before British rule, over two-thirds — yes, two-thirds — of Indian kings...
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Is John Kerry pro- or anti-India? -
Tanvi Madan, Indian Express
Later this summer, US Secretary of State John Kerry will visit India for the US-India Strategic Dialogue. Before and during his visit, many observers in India will likely try to assess whether Kerry is "pro-" or "anti-" India. This is not surprising. In the narrative of US-India relations, there has always been a hall of fame and a hall of shame. Praise was heaped upon "heroes" — such as President John F. Kennedy and US ambassadors to India Chester Bowles, John Kenneth Galbraith and Robert Blackwill — for being pro-India.
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UPA's 'Bharat smiling' feebly -
Subodh Varma, Times of India
The UPA is strenuously denying that this campaign is its earthy version of the NDA's " India Shining" campaign, but few are buying the denials. Launched as a "multi-media" campaign to highlight its achievements in two successive terms at the Center, it has been christened by political observers are UPA's " Bharat Smiling" campaign. The spirit of the campaign, says the publicity material given out by the Information & Broadcasting ministry, is "many miles we have come, but many more we still have to go"...
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Dholera’s Rs70,000-crore cure for investment famine -
Sunil Jain, Financial Express
The Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor Development Corporation (DMICDC) has already got 105 sq km for Phase 1 of its upcoming R70,000-crore city at Dholera in Gujarat, 110 km from Ahmedabad. The 903-sq km city — of which 540 sq km is developable as the rest falls in the coastal regulation zone (CRZ) area — is to be developed in six phases. Town planning for two of the phases has been done — 152 sq km — while the other four are to be done over the rest of the year and...
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Seeds of political patronage -
Shyamlal Yadav, Indian Express
In the early 1970s, the agriculture ministry, through the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), began setting up Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVKs) or farm science centres to educate farmers to increase agricultural production and to improve their socio-economic condition. Over the years, a small but significant portion of them have ended up as an instrument of political favour, having been allotted to politicians across the spectrum or their friends and relatives, The Indian Express has found.
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Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan’s comeback kid -
Bruce Riedel, Brookings
Nawaz Sharif is the comeback kid of Pakistani politics. With his party’s electoral victory, he is poised to become prime minister for an unprecedented third time. The Sharif odyssey has been remarkable—but now we will see if he can convert his victory into a new beginning for his deeply troubled country and our own tortured relations with it. The 63-year-old Nawaz Sharif was born into money as the scion of a very wealthy family in Lahore. He entered politics to protect the family’s industry from nationalization.
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Mamata’s TMC has ridiculed the mandate given to them in 2011 -
Dola Mitra, Outlook India
Two years ago, on the bright, sunny morning of May 13, a beaming Mamata Banerjee sat in a room of her one-storey house in the shanties of Kalighat surrounded by ecstatic party colleagues and animated journalists from across the country. The air was alive with excitement and anticipation. After all, it was a moment of historical significance. The results of the Bengal assembly polls had just been announced. Mamata had blown the Left Front’s defences apart with an overwhelming majority; the world’s longest-running democratically elected Communist...
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After Bansal, Ashwani, is it Manmohan next? -
S Gurumurthy, NewIndianExpress
On May 11, 2013 the Congress – and most media – touted the resignations of Pawan Bansal as Railway Minister and Ashwani Kumar as Law Minister as Sonia Gandhi’s reading out the riot act to Manmohan Singh and forcing him to restore honesty back to the UPA Government. To call this bluff one has only to look at how the Congress had defended Ashwini two weeks ago and Bansal a week before. Yet, there is world of difference between the two. Bansal had engaged his nephew Vijay Singla to sell, in grey market, several plum posts in the Railways.
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