Nepal’s Crumbling Manufacturing Sector

The Kaveri in Myth, Legend and Life 0
- Issue 4 - April 2012
- March 21, 2012
Gold and beads born of Northern Hill Garland and Incense born of Kodagu Hill Pearl of South Sea and Coral of Eastern Sea Ganga floods and benefits from the Cauvery Food of Ceylon and riches of Kazhagam. Pattinapappalai, Tamil epic from ca. 100 BCE Rivers convey to me memories of pleasure, of joy in immersing
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The Metaphysics of Expression: A Conversation with Natvar Bhavsar 1
- Issue 4 - April 2012
- March 21, 2012
“Change is the only constant. The soul is dyed the color of its thoughts.” – Heraclitus I first met Natvar Bhavsar in the middle of February at his sizable SoHo loft in Lower Manhattan. He is, in the words of art critic Jay Jacobs, “the best known and most successful Indian born contemporary artist on the
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The Myth of Technological Progress 0
- Issue 4 - April 2012
- March 21, 2012
Our current economic model assumes and appears to blindly advocate that technology and free markets can be the main drivers of human progress and development, thereby also overcoming challenges such as alleviating poverty. Such arguments are not backed by the facts and are a fallacy. They must be questioned as they stand in the way
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Pakistan’s Hide-and-Seek with Democracy, 1947-2011: The Bridge-to-Nowhere or Creeping Consolidation?0
- Issue 4 - April 2012
- March 21, 2012
Unlike India, Pakistan has struggled to institute democracy over the last sixty four years after gaining independence. Using the concepts of democratic transition, consolidation, stability and quality, this article investigates the impact of four sets of factors on Pakistan’s progress with democracy: structural, institutional, strategic choice and political economy. These factors emerge in Pakistan’s case
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Indian Strategy towards the Strait of Malacca 0
- Issue 4 - April 2012
- March 21, 2012
For decades, India has remained one of the most influential political and military powers on the Asian continent. Given the Indian population of nearly 1.2 billion, a strong and continually growing economy (GDP in terms of purchasing power parity in 2011 was four and a half trillion dollars) and the size and power of the
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The Importance of South Asia's Smaller States 0
- Issue 3 - January 2012
- January 4, 2012
Secretary of State Hilary Clinton recently stated in Foreign Policy that the US “is making a strategic bet on India’s future.” She explains: “There are still obstacles to overcome and questions to answer on both sides, but the United States is making a strategic bet on India’s future—that India’s greater role on the world stage
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U.S. Kashmir Policy in the Obama Administration and Beyond 0
- Issue 3 - January 2012
- January 4, 2012
During his successful 2008 campaign for the presidency, Barack Obama declared that he recognized that “working with Pakistan and India to try to resolve [the] Kashmir crisis in a serious way” would be among the critical tasks of his administration were he elected. Obama said that he knew the issue was “obviously a tar pit
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Kashmir – Existing Deadlocks and Emerging Challenges 0
- Issue 3 - January 2012
- January 4, 2012
Despite recent talks between India and Pakistan on Kashmir, the issue seems to have returned to the political backburner. Relations between the two countries are slowly improving, with Foreign Ministers meeting and Pakistan granting India most favored Nation status. However with regard to Kashmir the existing deadlock remains, and continues to be ignored while both
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The Crucibles and Dilemmas of US State Building in Afghanistan 4
- Issue 3 - January 2012
- January 4, 2012
The U.S. military intervention in Afghanistan, which began in 2001 as a presumably swift regime-change operation to drive the Taliban from power, morphed by the mid-2000s into a full-blown counterinsurgency against the Taliban’s effort to retake control of the country. In 2009, the Obama administration inherited the U.S. and international mission there in a condition
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The War for Afghan Women 0
- Issue 3 - January 2012
- January 4, 2012
After the launch of Operation Enduring Freedom, the burqa-clad Afghan woman became iconic as the poster-child for the war, “the visible sign of an invisible enemy that threatened not only ‘us’ citizens of the West but our entire civilization”. In the theater of war, the US drew on the classic dichotomy of good versus evil
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Waziristan – The Drone Delusion 0
- Issue 3 - January 2012
- January 4, 2012
The British campaigner Jemima Khan has lately become vocal in her quest to put an end to US predator drone strikes against terrorist targets in Pakistan’s volatile tribal belt. In a recent television appearance, she claimed that “not only are they (drones) not targeting militants…but worse, they are creating militants because for every innocent person
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Building a Peace Culture after a Vicious Civil War 0
- Issue 3 - January 2012
- January 4, 2012
One of the greatest difficulties in a democracy is to mediate fair decisions between ethnic majorities and minorities. This issue has led to terrorism and internal conflict, even in countries as economically advanced as Spain (Basque) and the United Kingdom (Northern Ireland). herpes antidote Democracy is a system predicated upon majority rule, with an implicit assumption
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Will Occupy Wall Street Protests influence India’s Indigenous Disenchantment?0
- Issue 3 - January 2012
- January 4, 2012
Is Indian society blind to corporate gaming? As “Occupy Wall Street” like protests spread their wings across the globe, gripping places without a trace of radical Leftist inclination and known to have benefited enormously from the global capitalist free-market system, India has so far remained isolated from this infectious revolutionary zeal. Apart from a fairly
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The Politics of Independence of Bangladesh 0
- Issue 3 - January 2012
- January 4, 2012
Historians still do not have all the records they need to fully understand the freedom struggle of Bangladesh and offer a proper appreciation of the role of all the participants. Political parties remain justifiably attached to their founders; partisans attached to India and Pakistan also have their memories, points of view and all merit attention.
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