It was September 2008. As the Bush Administration prepared to leave office with America’s global reputation in shambles, something that seemed astonishing happened. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who had already been treating American officials like Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice with uncharacteristic generosity, stated, “the people of India deeply love you, President Bush.” For
READ MOREIntroduction Pakistan, a nuclear-armed country with 180 million people, is struggling against a host of complex problems. It inherited some of these in 1947 — like poor industrial and government infrastructure, inadequate educational facilities1 and insecurity vis-à-vis an entrenched rivalry with India—while many of its other troubles are largely self-inflicted. Among this second category, political
READ MORE“We’re going to go to the central grounds, and we’re going to get in front of the crowds and yell our speeches, and we’re going to go like this!” Krishna Bahadur Karki was getting visibly excited as he jabbed his clenched fist repeatedly into the air. Next to him was a well-thumbed Nepali translation of
READ MOREWednesday April 24th, WASHINGTON, D.C. buy generic propecia online A DIVERSE coterie of journalists, academics, and policy professionals, including two Congressmen, two current Ambassadors, three former United States Ambassadors, and one US Senator, convened at the Willard Intercontinental Hotel in Washington D.C., to celebrate the first inaugural dinner of the South Asia Journal. The Publisher
READ MOREThe Disaster of Water Sanitation In 2012, for the first time in the history of India, the country has seen nationwide public protests against improper waste management – from the northernmost state Jammu and Kashmir to the southernmost Tamil Nadu. A fight for the right to a clean environment and for environmental justice led the
READ MOREI began hearing grumbling last February from Bangladeshi friends complaining that the world’s news media were ignoring a game changing event in Bangladesh. “Why then when the Shahbagh story is unfolding before the world’s eyes,” wrote one young Bangladeshi blogger, “[is] the international media looking away?” Bangladeshis by the hundreds of thousands, including many young
READ MORE“Physical force is the means of war and to impose our will on the enemy is its object. To secure that object we must render the enemy powerless, and that, in theory is the true aim of warfare.” free credit report and score On War, Carl von Clausewitz Violence against women is seldom referred to
READ MOREAs a vibrant and resurgent Asia improves trade with the outside world, a plethora of multi-modal connectivity projects has underscored the urgency of land and sea infrastructure creation in the region. From an Indian and South East Asian perspective, the key connectivity project is the 3200 kms trilateral highway connecting India, Myanmar and Thailand. The
READ MOREFor several decades, India has been a spectacle as the world’s largest democracy. That it has achieved this epithet is the result of the country’s overwhelming population—at a staggering 1.2 billion, it is second only to China—and the existence of democracy’s basic tenets in the country’s system of universal adult suffrage, elections and its Constitution.
READ MOREIntroduction On the 10th of June 2012, more than 500 members of the Rohingya community, a historically persecuted ethnic group originating from the Rakhine State in Western Myanmar crossed the Naf River into Southeast Bangladesh to seek refugee from large scale sectarian strife that was originally identified as an ethnic conflict between the minority Rohingyas
READ MORESri Lanka has had three constitutions since it achieved independence from Britain, and each has contributed in different ways to the erosion of the relatively liberal political system that once characterized the island’s government. Following the promulgation of the second republican constitution of 1978, Sri Lanka has developed into a constitutionally based authoritarian state. In
READ MOREBangladesh returned to electoral democracy in January 2009 after two years under a military ‘caretaker’ government. An alliance led by the Awami League (AL) secured a landslide victory in freely conducted election held in late 2008 under the auspices of the caretaker system. There were hopes that the political crisis which had necessitated a military-backed
READ MOREIn 1992, RAND published an interpretive essay by Dr. George Tanham[1], an American defense analyst, on the historicaland cultural factors that have shaped India’s strategic thinking. The essay is important because it highlighted and reinforced particular sensitive criticisms which continue to form the basis of significant Indian self-examination and self-justification. This paper reviews Tanham’s major
READ MOREThe year 2011 was the sesquicentennial of the birth of India’s distinguished polymath and Nobel Prize-winning poet Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941). The occasion was celebrated with great éclat not only in India and Bangladesh, but in cities and countries throughout the world where there are enclaves, large and small, of expatriate South Asians, especially Bengalis, and
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