Asia ignores 'divide and conquer' tactics
Global Times | December 19, 2011 19:23
By M.D. Nalapat
In 1945, then US President Harry S. Truman, guided by his Europhile Secretary of State Dean Acheson, reversed former President Franklin D. Roosevelt's correct policy of aligning the US in Asia with Asians, rather than with their European colonizers.
The US replaced Europe in Asia as the dominant power, and thereafter regarded itself as having the right to force Asian countries into following policies that benefit US and NATO interests rather than their own.
With the 21st century rise of China, the US has a challenger in Asia that has the potential to be bigger than itself. Hence the effort to concentrate on the issue that can turn its Asian neighbors against China, which is the South China Sea dispute. By concentrating on this divisive issue, people in the region are playing into the divisive agenda of outside powers.
[Counterbalance] [US global strategy] [Fragmentation]
Sino-Indian conflict can't become war
Global Times | December 19, 2011 19:33
By Agencies
Recently, topics like the postponement of Sino-Indian boundary talks and the US "return to Asia," involving the delicate relationship between China and India, have been interpreted by the Western media as an indicator that the conflict between the two countries could break out at any moment.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh denied the rumor that "China will launch attacks" the other day and made it clear that the two countries both promised to maintain tolerance over border issues.
The Western media often exaggerates Sino-Indian conflicts, behind which, obviously, is the intention to sow discord between China and India. It is in line with their arms sales and their interventions in the Asia-Pacific region. [China India] [Counterbalance]
Manmohan Singh in Moscow: The mystique of India-Russia summitry
Melkulangara BHADRAKUMAR | 15.12.2011 | 20:34
On the eve of his departure for Moscow for the annual summit meeting with the Russian leadership 15-17 December – 15th annual summit in a row – Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made an unprecedented statement in the Indian parliament that his government does not believe that China is planning to attack India and that “by and large” the Sino-Indian border has remained peaceful despite some incursions by the Chinese forces.
Nothing could have brought out more starkly that as regards one of the most crucial vectors of their respective regional and foreign policies – perhaps, the most crucial vector increasingly –Delhi and Moscow are holding different prisms. The two countries have avoided noticing it, but in the power dynamic in regional and world politics is intruding.
A new Asian arithmetic
Several developments over recent months indicate that China’s ascendancy in Asia may not go quite as unchallenged as previously believed
Yamini Lohia There’s a wind blowing, and it may just be changing direction. Several developments over recent months indicate that China’s ascendancy in Asia may not go quite as unchallenged as previously believed. A combination of factors, from the United States’ renewed determination to be viewed as a Pacific power to an increasing reluctance on the part of other countries in the region, particularly in East Asia, to be dependent solely on Beijing’s goodwill, have resulted in a geopolitical re-alignment of a sort.
[China confrontation] [US global strategy][Counterbalance]
China, India perform dangerous new dance of encircler, counter-encircler
By Simon Denyer, Published: November 27
NEW DELHI — It was billed as a new assertiveness, when India’s usually meek Prime Minister Manmohan Singh supposedly looked his Chinese counterpart in the eye at a summit in Bali last weekend and defended his country’s “commercial” right to explore for oil and gas in the South China Sea.
[China confrontation] [Territorial diputes]
India's increasing troop may go nowhere
By He Zude, Fang Wei (China Youth Daily)07:39, November 15, 2011 Edited and translated by People's Daily Online
India plans to recruit 100,000 soldiers over the next five years and send them to the China-India border areas to cement its military strength there, according to a report by the Times of India on Nov. 2. India's defense ministry has already approved a 13 billion-U.S. dollar military modernization plan.
The average growth rate of India's military spending has stood at 7 percent to 8 percent for more than a decade, and its military spending ranks ninth in the world. India is also the world's largest arms imports country. The spread of the "China threat" theory, the increase of troops to the disputed areas near the China-India border, and the display of a tough attitude toward China all aim to make a breakthrough in further increasing military spending
[China confrontation]
India's Tommy Hilfiger utopia is a bluff that will soon be called across the globe
Here as elsewhere, the elite's shops and private universities won't long hide rising poverty and educational decline
Pankaj Mishra guardian.co.uk, Sunday 9 October 2011 21.00 BST Article history
Last week, as India's TV anchors and columnists worked themselves up into a moralistic frenzy about a measure of poverty proposed by the planning commission (40p a day per person), I visited the new outlet for Tommy Hilfiger in the north Indian state of Himachal Pradesh. Press coverage about the opening, and accounts of the new Hermès store in Mumbai, which will sell saris for £6,000, seemed to make debates about India's poverty line look irrelevant. Himachal, too, seemed to be taking a giant step towards becoming a consumer of western brand names.
The shop was empty, the salesmen sunk into torpor. There were no likely customers in sight when I passed it a few days later. Obviously, there are few takers for the reassuringly expensive preppy look in one of India's predominantly rural states. But the wisdom of financial elites and their mouthpieces in the media rarely brushes against actuality. In any case, appearances are everything in the age of globalisation.
[Globalisation] [Poverty] [Spin]
India Graduates Millions, but Too Few Are Fit to Hire
By GEETA ANAND
Many recent engineering grads in India say that after months of job hunting they are still unemployed and lack the skills necessary to join the workforce. Critics say corruption and low standards are to blame. Poh Si Teng reports from New Delhi.
.BANGALORE, India—Call-center company 24/7 Customer Pvt. Ltd. is desperate to find new recruits who can answer questions by phone and email. It wants to hire 3,000 people this year. Yet in this country of 1.2 billion people, that is beginning to look like an impossible goal.
So few of the high school and college graduates who come through the door can communicate effectively in English, and so many lack a grasp of educational basics such as reading comprehension, that the company can hire just three out of every 100 applicants.
Flawed Miracle
The Journal is examining the threats to, and limits of, India's economic ascent.
In India, Doubts Gather Over Rising Giant's Course
.India projects an image of a nation churning out hundreds of thousands of students every year who are well educated, a looming threat to the better-paid middle-class workers of the West. Their abilities in math have been cited by President Barack Obama as a reason why the U.S. is facing competitive challenges.
[Education]
A bumpier but freer road
Despite all the mess and chaos of India, the country’s business is booming. This will change the world
Sep 30th 2010 | Delhi | from the print edition
..AN INDIAN boss gestures from the lofty window of his steel-and-glass office. Ten years ago, says Pramod Bhasin, “you couldn’t even get a cup of coffee around here.” Now the area bristles with office blocks. Gurgaon, near Delhi, has swiftly become a global hub for outsourcing. Its recent rural past is not forgotten, however. Villagers still herd goats along its streets; pigs snuffle in the rubbish.
Mr Bhasin, who heads a firm called Genpact, speaks of outsourcing as a dentist might of flossing. Car firms should concentrate on making better cars, he says; most other tasks should be outsourced. Personnel departments, for example, need a few people to handle employees’ gripes face-to-face, but form-filling and data entry can be handled more efficiently by specialists. “I’ve got 10,000 people doing this,” he says. “They’re good at it.”
India’s fast growth fails to lift primary education
By James Lamont in New Delhi
Primary education standards in India are as bad as in Papua New Guinea and crisis-torn Afghanistan and Yemen, according to a team of Indian development economists.
[Education]
Indian wines fly off British supermarket shelves
Critic is not 'overly impressed' but consumers keen on sub-continent's brands
Rebecca Smithers, consumer affairs correspondent guardian.co.uk, Monday 19 September 2011 18.22 BST Article history
Indian wine has improved but still has some way to go before it offers a genuine challenge to established wine-producing nations.
The first Indian wines to be sold by a British supermarket could become a fixture on its shelves after coming close to selling out in record time.
Earlier this month, Waitrose became the first UK supermarket to stock the little-known brands from the sub-continent as part of a showcase of unusual wines from across the world.
[Wine]
Health Officials at Risk as India’s Graft Thrives
Daniel Etter for The New York Times
An effort to improve maternal health care in Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state, has been plagued by a host of problems.
By LYDIA POLGREEN
Published: September 17, 2011
LUCKNOW, India — The first doctor to die, a senior government health administrator, was shot on his morning walk last October by two men on a motorbike. Six months later, his successor, a cardiologist, was shot to death while out on a predawn stroll. A third government doctor, accused of conspiring to murder the first two, was found dead in jail in June, lying in a pool of blood with deep cuts all over his body.
Lucknow's health care money has drawn dangerous interest.
The one thing the doctors had in common? All three had at one point been in charge of spending this city’s portion of the nearly $2 billion that has flowed to Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, as part of a nationwide push to improve the health of India’s poorest citizens.
The state’s health infrastructure remains abysmal, and officials say they now suspect that the murders resulted from a virulent combination of fast money, scant oversight and a notoriously graft-addled state political leadership. The last doctor to die, relatives say, was preparing to name names in a widening scandal. The central government has stepped in to investigate.
[Corruption]
India makes waves with South China Sea oil and gas exploration
(Global Times)09:49, September 18, 2011 India's External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna began a 3-day visit to Vietnam on Friday as reports claimed that an Indian state-owned oil producer is set to undertake joint exploration of gas resources in the South China Sea with Vietnam, in spite of protests from Beijing.
The Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) was reported on Thursday to have cemented a deal with Vietnamese firms to exploit oil and gas in two offshore South China Sea oil blocks with Krishna expected to discuss the issue in Vietnam.
[Territorial disputes][China India]
Water is the new weapon in Beijing’s armoury
By Brahma Chellaney
China has aroused international alarm by using its virtual monopoly of rare earths as a trade instrument and by stalling multilateral efforts to resolve disputes in the South China Sea. Among its neighbours, there is deep concern at the way it is seeking to make water a political weapon.
[China confrontation]
Mass Graves Hold Thousands, Kashmir Inquiry Finds
By LYDIA POLGREEN
Published: August 22, 2011
NEW DELHI — Thousands of bullet-riddled bodies are buried in dozens of unmarked graves across Kashmir, a state human rights commission inquiry has concluded, many of them likely to be those of civilians who disappeared more than a decade ago in the brutal insurgency in the troubled region.
[Separatism] [Human rights]
Nepal: From Two Armies to One
Asia Report N°211
18 Aug 2011
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Central to Nepal’s peace process is the integration of some of the Maoist People’s Liberation Army (PLA) into the state security forces and the “rehabilitation” (sic) or retirement of the rest.
[Imperialism]
Taiwan hosts major trade fair in Chennai, India
Mumbai's landmark Gateway of India signifies the country’s attractive market where many Taiwanese ICT and electronics companies seek business opportunities. (CNA)•Publication Date:08/16/2011
•Source: Taiwan Today
•By Aaron Hsu
Taiwan will host the fifth annual Electronics, Machinery, Mold, Auto Parts (EMMA) exhibition in Chennai, India, to deepen bilateral trade, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said Aug. 15.
During this year’s expo, scheduled to take place Aug. 25 to 27, a total of 172 Taiwanese companies from the precision machinery, automotive and electronics sectors will showcase their latest products at 262 booths, TAITRA said.
Indian PM slams anti-corruption activist as protests over arrest spread
By Simon Denyer and Rama Lakshmi, NEW DELHI — Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh stepped up a war of words with a jailed anti-corruption activist on Wednesday, calling his hunger strike misconceived and undemocratic, as protests about his arrest swelled across the country for a second day.
Thousands of protesters gathered outside the jail in New Delhi where 74-year-old self-styled Gandhian activist Anna Hazare continued his “fast unto death” to demand tougher laws against official graft.
.In Parliament, Singh accused him of trying to circumvent democracy by demanding that lawmakers pass legislation only on his terms.
“The question before the nation is who drafts the law and who makes the law,” he said. “We will not allow anyone to question the sole prerogative of Parliament to make the law.” Reading from a prepared statement, Singh used combative words but spoke in an almost incomprehensible monotone, drawing jeers from opposition benches.
By arresting Hazare and detaining thousands of his supporters Tuesday, hours before he was to begin his fast, the government appears to have played into Hazare’s hands and further galvanized the popular movement against corruption.
[Corruption] [Human rights]
Arundhati Roy: 'They are trying to keep me destabilised. Anybody who says anything is in danger'
The Booker prize-winning novelist on her political activism in India, why she no longer condemns violent resistance – and why it doesn't matter if she never writes a second novel
. Does she condemn that violence? "I don't condemn it any more," she says. "If you're an adivasi [tribal Indian] living in a forest village and 800 CRP [Central Reserve Police] come and surround your village and start burning it, what are you supposed to do? Are you supposed to go on hunger strike? Can the hungry go on a hunger strike? Non-violence is a piece of theatre. You need an audience. What can you do when you have no audience? People have the right to resist annihilation."
Roy talks about the resistance as an "insurrection"; she makes India sound as if it's ripe for a Chinese or Russian-style revolution. So how come we in the west don't hear about these mini-wars? "I have been told quite openly by several correspondents of international newspapers," she says, "that they have instructions – 'No negative news from India' – because it's an investment destination. So you don't hear about it. But there is an insurrection, and it's not just a Maoist insurrection. Everywhere in the country, people are fighting." I find the suggestion that such an injunction exists – or that self-respecting journalists would accept it – ridiculous. Foreign reporting of India might well be lazy or myopic, but I don't believe it's corrupt.
[Media]
Setting The Agenda For India In Afghanistan – Analysis
Written by: Dr Shanthie Mariet D Souza
May 11, 2011
As the Indian Prime Minister prepares for the forthcoming Afghan visit, within a few days of the killing of Osama bin Laden, most analysts see the visit as a last ditch effort to salvage the India’s waning influence in the conflict-ridden country, where it has made huge economic and strategic investments. With the commencement of a drawdown of US forces is slated to begin in July 2011 and the chatter now indicates the possibility of an accelerated US exit in a post-Osama Afghanistan, analysts in New Delhi and outside, see Dr. Manmohan Singh’s long-pending visit as pressing of the panic button by India, which is still coming to terms with the evolving realities.
India’s deep and sustained involvement in Afghanistan for the past years has been interpreted as a fragile entity. In spite of the aid pledge of US$1.3 billion and its involvement in several development projects which have generated support and goodwill among the Afghan population, India’s presence in that country remains critically linked to the fragile security situation, which in turn is overtly dependant on the US and NATO war efforts. It is, thus, suggested that any scale down of the international presence and consequent spike in Taliban violence will compel India to shut shop and return.
Exploring Pakistan’s Nuclear Thresholds – Analysis
Written by: Khan A. Sufyan
May 5, 2011
Recent testing of short range ballistic and cruise missiles by Pakistan has initiated a debate in India regarding possible use of battlefield tactical nuclear weapons by Pakistan and the strategic instability it has caused. Pakistan’s declared nuclear format clearly indicates deterrence against conventional as well as nuclear threat. To provide credibility to such deterrence a full spectrum response capability is essential which also devolves around the principle difference between the use of tactical nuclear weapons and tactical use of nuclear weapons.
[Nuclear weapons] [Asymmetry]
Is a Sino-Indian war really possible?
April 7th, 2011
Author: Vikas Kumar, Bangalore
Both the Chinese and Indian media suffer from hysteria over an impending Sino-Indian War and occasionally indulge in competitive jingoism.
The hysteria usually begins with some obscure news item or opinion piece published in one country regarding the offensive preparations from the other side of the Himalayas and quickly escalates to a ‘we-will-give-a-fitting-reply’ kind of exchange. The ‘naïve jingoist’ argument goes like this: we are aware of the other country’s irrationality and weaknesses while it is unaware of our rationality and strengths or has been misled by the West, which is why it is courting trouble by provoking us.
[China India] [China confrontation]
Indian General Expresses Concerns Over Chinese Military Presence in Kashmir
In an unusually frank airing of India's security concerns, a top Indian general says China's military collaboration with Pakistan is likely to be detrimental to India's long term strategic interests. Some Indian security experts say India is surrounded by China on all sides.
Indian External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna offered reassurance Wednesday that Delhi "closely and regularly monitors all developments" along its border "to ensure the safety and security" of the Indian people.
He was responding to questions about an alarm sounded publicly by one of India's top military officers, Lieutenant-General KT Parnaik, chief of the Indian army's Northern Command. In a security seminar in the Indian city of Jammu, Parnaik appeared to confirm what had been reported by media - that Chinese military forces were operating in the Pakistan-administered portion of disputed Kashmir, divided by a tense border the two sides refer to as the "line of control."
[China confrontation] [Media]
Not a Chinese Century, An Indo-American One
By Daniel Twining
[March, 2011]
China’s three decades of explosive growth and increasing influence on the global stage have often led to talk of the country dominating the 21st century. But Daniel Twining, an Asia specialist at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, argues that democratic values and strategic interests shared by India and the US could upend this expectation as the two countries pull closer together.
The strategic alienation of India from the United States was one of the great anomalies of the Cold War. The rapprochement of the world’s biggest democracies from 2000 to the present is one of the key dividends of the new world order that emerged after the end of US-Soviet rivalry and the dawning of the modern era of globalization. India, which will soon have the world’s third-largest economy and its largest population, is increasingly central to the future of the global order; the US National Intelligence Council has called it the decisive “swing state” in the international system.1 India’s posture is thus central to the long-term position of the US and other democracies.
[US global strategy] [China confrontation] [India counterweight]
India shuns US in $11bn fighter deal
By James Lamont and Amy Kazmin in New Delhi
Published: April 28 2011 11:28 | Last updated: April 28 2011 19:41
India has shortlisted European jet fighters, in preference to US and Russian rivals, in a hotly contested $11bn competition to supply the Indian air force with advanced combat aircraft.
At stake is a deal to equip India with 126 multi-role fighter jets in one of the world’s largest military contracts. The winning bid is expected to shape India’s air power for the next three decades and serve as the bedrock of a strategic partnership.
After trials, India selected France’s Dassault Rafale and the multinational Eurofighter Typhoon – both currently operating over Libya – to compete in the next stage of the competition, according to India’s defence ministry. A spokesman told the Financial Times that a final decision would be taken within a year.
The move will be a blow to the US. Washington strongly lobbied India to buy its aircraft as payback for the landmark Indian-US civil nuclear deal in 2008. The agreement – brokered by Manmohan Singh, Indian premier, and then-US president George W. Bush – brought India’s nuclear programme out of decades of global isolation.
.
[Arms sales] [Decline] [Tribute] [Client]
India’s double-digit growth ambitions fade
Published: April 25, 2011
NEW DELHI (AFP) – India’s dreams of attaining double-digit economic growth within the next few years are fading, undermined by high inflation, slow progress on reforms and an uncertain global outlook.
The ruling Congress party has long wanted to make history as the administration which ushered in growth of 10 per cent—touted by successive governments as vital to significantly reduce crushing poverty.
But India’s main economic planning body looks set to row back on the goal of double-digit expansion when it fixes the country’s five-year economic, social and other goals to 2017.
Setting a target of 10 per cent average growth “for the next five years is not feasible”, Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia admitted late last week, citing inflation, a need to jump-start reforms and an “international situation full of uncertainty”.
Tata, Radia to appear before PAC today
India Blooms News Service
New Delhi, Apr 04 (IBNS):Tata group head Ratan Tata and corporate lobbyist Niira Radia are scheduled to appear before Indian Parliament's Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on Monday in connection with the 2G spectrum allocation scam.
Ratan Tata is expected to be quizzed by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) over the 2G allocation irregularities even though a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) was formed to investigate the scam, besides the probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s Murli Manohar Joshi-led committee which is conducting a parallel probe into the scandal has also summoned corporate lobbyist Niira Radia.
The leaked taped conversations of the high-profile lobbyist with Tata and other influential people, including the jailed ex-telecoms minister A Raja who is accused of masterminding the swindle, had rattled the nation.
[Corruption] [Mobiles]
India-New Zealand PTA: Broaden it for balanced gains
April 1st, 2011
Author: Mukul G. Asher, NUS, and Rahul Sen, AUT
As part of a broader objective of deeper economic integration with Asia, New Zealand embarked last year on negotiating a preferential trade agreement (PTA) with India, one of the rapidly growing emerging markets in Asia.
[FTA]
Defusing South Asia's Demographic Time Bomb
To avoid the sort of unrest that's hitting the Arab world, regional leaders must preemptively address youth unemployment with immediate job-creation strategies, writes columnist Maha Hosain Aziz By Maha Hosain Aziz
When we're young, we dream about what we want to be when we grow up. But for many young people today, ineffective governments have shattered their dreams before their professional lives can begin. The psychological toll of squandered young potential is immeasurable. In certain Middle Eastern and North African countries, frustrated unemployed youths continue to take to the streets to protest, partly because of the lack of job opportunity provided by their governments. Could such youth-driven civil unrest also occur in politically ineffective countries in South Asia?
[Labour] [Media]
Doing business in India: New Zealand case studies
New Zealand companies looking to sell in India need to make “a long-term commitment and investment, adds Gallagher SMS general manager Curtis Edgecombe. These two new business case studies, on Glidepath and Gallagher SMS, focus on the logistics and processes of establishing a New Zealand company's presence in the Indian market.
[Services]
Foreign Investment Ebbs in India
by VIKAS BAJAJ
Published: February 24, 2011
MUMBAI, India — India’s rise has captured the world’s imagination, as the economy grows at nearly 9 percent a year and a growing consumer class buys cellphones, cars and homes. Yet foreign businesses and investors, once increasingly eager to tap that stunning growth, have started looking elsewhere.
Foreign direct investment in India fell more than 31 percent, to $24 billion, in 2010 even as investors flocked to developing nations as a group.
And in the last two months, foreign investors took $1.4 billion out of the Indian stock market, helping drive the country’s Nifty 50 stock index down 17 percent from the record high it set in early November.
The decline in foreign investment highlights the challenges outsiders still face in India, two decades after policy makers started opening up the country to the world. For Indian leaders, the drop in outside money could make it harder to achieve the faster and broader economic growth that they need to create jobs and pull hundreds of millions of India’s 1.1 billion people out of poverty.
[FDI]
China Profits From India's Karmapa Blunder
I have an article up on Asia Times, China Profits From India's Tibet Bungle.
Compared to China, India gets a free ride from world opinion concerning its handling of its borders and ethnic fissures.
But India's record is largely one of arrogance and ineptitude in its dealings with Sri Lanka (supported Tamil separatists and helped ignite civil war); Nepal (engineered the deposition of the king, inadvertently put the Maoists in charge, a mistake it is working mightily to undue); Sikkim (subverted and annexed ); Kashmir (a dismal record of occupation and massacre). Of course, Pakistan still holds a grudge over India's only major geopolitical success: its active assistance to pro-independence forces that split off East Pakistan and created Bangladesh. It remains to be seen if India's efforts to surround Pakistan by deepening ties with Afghanistan brings a rare victory or, as is more likely, yields more catastrophic blowback.
A Divisive Indian Official Is Loved by Businesses
By HEATHER TIMMONS
Published: February 8, 2011
GANDHINAGAR, India — In a soaring, unfinished conference hall in western India, thousands of businessmen and diplomats from around the world gathered recently for an investment meeting. They were there to pay homage to a politician for accomplishing something once thought almost impossible in India: making it easy to do business.
The Canadian company Bombardier built a manufacturing plant in Savli, Gujarat, in 18 months, “a world record within Bombardier,” one executive said.
The politician, Narendra Modi, the chief minister of the state of Gujarat, sat onstage, stroking his close-cropped white beard, as executives from the United States, Canada, Japan and elsewhere showered him with praise.
Ron Somers, head of an American trade group, called him a progressive leader. Michael Kadoorie, a Hong Kong billionaire, enveloped him in a hug.
“I would encourage you all to invest here,” Mr. Kadoorie, chairman of the Asian power company CLP Group, told the audience, “because it has been an even playing field for me.”
The coastal state of Gujarat, famous as the birthplace of Mahatma Gandhi, has become an investment magnet. The state’s gross domestic product is growing at an 11 percent annual rate — even faster than the overall growth rate for India, which despite its problems is zipping along at 9 percent clip.
And Mr. Modi receives — some would say claims — much of the credit. The year before he took office in 2001, Gujarat’s economy shrank by 5 percent.
But critics of Mr. Modi, a Hindu nationalist, point to another legacy of his early days in office — something that has made him one of the most polarizing figures in Indian politics. Months after he became chief minister, Gujarat erupted in brutal Hindu-Muslim riots that killed more than 1,000 people, most of them Muslims.
[Human rights] [Communalism]
Tibetan Lama Faces Scrutiny in India
Tsering Topgyal/Associated Press
Exiled Tibetans in India carried portraits of Ogyen Trinley Dorje, a lama who is under investigation by the country’s police.
By JIM YARDLEY
Published: February 7, 2011
DHARAMSALA, India — His daring escape from Tibet seemed out of a movie. Then only 14, Ogyen Trinley Dorje was one of Tibetan Buddhism’s most revered incarnate lamas, and his journey through the icy passes of the Himalayas was viewed as a major embarrassment for China. The youth arrived in India in early 2000 to a euphoric greeting from Tibetan exiles.
India, though, was less certain about what to do with him. Intelligence agencies, suspicious of his loyalties and skeptical of his miraculous escape, interrogated him and tightly restricted his travel.
Tensions are rising between India and China over a variety of issues, including Tibet. Sophisticated hackers, traced to China, have penetrated computer systems in Dharamsala and at Indian government ministries. China has long blamed Tibetan exiles in India for fueling instability across the border in Tibet. But now India, too, seems more wary of Tibetan activities; the Indian police are investigating new Tibetan monasteries near the border for possible ties to China, a police official said.
Lauded Abroad, Indian Leader Is Besieged at Home
By JIM YARDLEY
Published: January 18, 2011
NEW DELHI — Few leaders are more respected globally than Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India. President Obama has described him as a historic figure, close friend and valued adviser. (So, for that matter, did President George W. Bush.) When Newsweek ranked world leaders, Mr. Singh ranked first, winning praise for his modesty and incorruptibility. He was described as the “leader that other leaders love.”
But if he is lauded overseas, Mr. Singh is now under attack at home, as critics blame his administration for indecision and inaction. His government is besieged by corruption scandals, runaway inflation and bickering among senior ministers. Amid the clamor, Mr. Singh has often seemed silent or aloof, even as his political enemies have portrayed him as the weak captain of a rudderless administration.
The loud criticism of Mr. Singh, who sits atop the coalition government led by the Indian National Congress Party, is partly the white noise of India’s raucous democracy, and partly a reprise of old complaints. But the public perception of disarray is one reason the prime minister is expected to reshuffle his cabinet as early as Wednesday.
Many analysts say Mr. Singh must recharge his administration to tackle major issues like food security, power supply and infrastructure, as well as to push through reforms on land and governance. More than that, they say, he must seize the moment to address larger, systemic failures in governing that foster corruption and could eventually undermine India’s aspirations to become a global power.
There is room for two ambitious Asian giants
Source: Global Times [08:31 December 15 2010] Comments Chinese premier Wen Jiabao begins his three-day official visit to India Wednesday with a huge trade delegation of more than 300 businesspeople. As two emerging Asian powers, China and India now face a new opportunity to dissolve misgivings and build mutual trust in a pragmatic way.
[China India]
China-India ties: Wen Jiabao in India – making nice slowly
January 16th, 2011
Author: Sourabh Gupta, Samuels International Associates
Embarking on his 2005 visit to New Delhi, Premier Wen Jiabao had noted that the India trip was the most important item on his international calendar that year.
In New Delhi, Wen and Prime Minister Singh proceeded to append their signatures to a groundbreaking set of political parameters aimed at solving their longstanding boundary question. For India, the parameters constituted a belated formal acceptance of the significant elements of the principles-based offer to boundary dispute resolution that had first been tabled by Zhou Enlai in New Delhi almost 45 years to the day of the 2005 meeting. In turn, Premier Wen formally conceded the hitherto disputed border state of Sikkim as being a part of India. Along the way, the two sides elevated their relations from a ‘constructive and cooperative partnership’ to a ‘strategic and cooperative partnership’.
By mid-2009, however, bilateral ties were marked by their most significant extended phase of deterioration since full normalization two decades earlier. The Hu Jintao and Manmohan Singh exchange of visits in late 2006 and 2008, respectively, were the first summit meetings — going back to the late-1980s and involving a Chinese head of state — to show no forward progress on the boundary dispute. Further, in response to India’s (long-overdue) fortification of its shared frontier, and jingoistic coverage of the same in the Indian media, darker voices in Beijing insinuated that New Delhi needed to introspect about the causes of its poor relationship with neighbours.
[China India] [Territorial disputes]
Indian corruption backlash builds after 'year of the treasure hunters'
Ruling party plans new law to fight corruption as Indian public's disgust spreads from tea shops to crowdsourcing websites
Share55 Jason Burke in Delhi guardian.co.uk, Sunday 2 January 2011 19.18 GMT Article history
India's former telecoms minister Andimuthu Raja is being investigated for his role in the sale of licenses for 2G mobile phone technology at a fraction of their true value. Photograph: Adnan Abidi/Reuters
It is an image that has become wearily familiar to Indians in recent days. On the front cover of its new year issue India Today ran pictures of four men under the headline "2010 – year of the treasure hunters".
Inside an editorial said bluntly: "One word dominated the national vocabulary [last year]: corruption." The men pictured are high-profile businessmen and politicians variously accused of graft, complicity or tax-dodging.
Written by Aroon Purie, one of India's best-known publishers, the editorial summed up what many are saying from well-heeled Delhi sitting rooms to bus stop tea shops: "In India, the sheer banality of the word evokes a sense of deja vu … [but] the size and frequency of corruption in 2010 made it the theme of the year."
India has seen many scams before, but few have been as brazen and on such a scale as those that have come to light in recent weeks
[Corruption]