India can be forced to shine but whether the people of India will shine remains the question, and that remains the ground on which the Congress is making huge strides in its fight against the BJP in this election.
Southern Storms in Asia and Europe: What Youth Protests Reveal About Governance
Southern Europe shows that mobilisation can reshape political agendas while leaving difficult economic questions unresolved. South Asia shows that a narrow grievance can become a challenge to the legitimacy of a governing system when trust has already been eroded. The real test of governance is whether institutions learn between storms—before the next generation concludes that the street is the only place where its voice can be heard.
Ballot Over Barracks: Why Pakistan's Future Depends on Civilian Power
At independence, Pakistan's economy was competitive with India's. Today India's is more than ten times larger, and Pakistan is on roughly its 25th IMF program. Investors rarely abandon a country simply because it is poor. They leave when they cannot tell who actually decides.
Lessons From the Past: What India's Opposition and Youth can Learn From Gandhi and JP Movements
The young need not become another opposition. They could become an independent democratic force that questions every government but belongs to none; that protests when necessary but constructs continuously; that demands accountability from institutions while practising accountability itself.
Custodial Deaths Are a Blot on Bangladesh's Democratic Future
To what extent has the current BNP government been able to realise the vision that drove the 2024 mass uprising in Bangladesh? Will the BNP government, too, manipulate state mechanisms and law enforcement agencies to serve its own interests, much like the previous Sheikh Hasina regime, to suppress the opposition and silence critics? The government must therefore take serious steps to amend police laws and prevent deaths in police custody. This is one of the crucial reforms facing the administration.
More on Governance, Public Policy, Politics and Law
Manipur continues to bleed as political skullduggery continues
According to a new report by the Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), conflict and violence triggered 69,000 displacements in South Asia during 2023, with Manipur alone accounting for 67,000.
Are Hindus in danger in India due to rising Muslim population?
It is estimated that the Muslim population which is 14.2 per cent as per the 2011 census will stabilize at 18 per cent by 2050 as the trends amongst the Muslim community show.
India's leadership in economic migration is a mixed blessing
India’s inward remittances keep growing, having more than doubled since 2010, and showing a growth of over 6 per cent per year, ahead of GDP growth. By comparison, China’s inbound remittances have been falling. Pakistan and Bangladesh get about one-fourth of what India gets.
Three verdicts that upheld India's democracy
If democracy does survive in this sub-continent, posterity will certainly hail these recently pronounced three judgments as the primary reason for its preservation.
Future of Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline project remains in limbo
While Iran’s ties with the West, especially US, may have hit rock bottom, Pakistan despite the public posturing will not be able to go ahead with the project at the cost of annoying the US.
Manipur: Where voters are more concerned about existential threats than electoral preferences
At the heart of the violence lies majority triumphalism combined with a systematic denial of knowledge acquisition, specifically histories, for the minority community in Manipur.
India's election: Is the Congress setting the agenda with a sharp ideological positioning?
Do note that the BJP because of its sloganeering and expectation-setting has to cross its previous mark of 303 to be seen as victorious; the INDIA alliance has to pull the BJP below 272 to claim victory. Barring the possibility, extremely remote at this time, of the Congress and/or the INDIA alliance faring very poorly at these polls, what we have is a party that will shape the direction of policy in India in the days ahead.
India's election: What the manifestos missed out
Despite learning a bitter lesson from Covid-19, our governments, whether at the state or national level, have failed to recognise the importance of ensuring trouble-free access to public health.
The unheard public voice: What democracy needs is a strong middle layer
The rich build gated communities for themselves, in which they pay for their own private services of security, and 24X7 power and water supply. They lose sight of the needs of people living outside their walls.
Neglecting the demands of Ladakhis can have bearing on India's national security
Mixing politics with national security in sensitive border regions like Manipur and Ladakh can cost us dearly. China is a rogue state with aggressive designs and well well-advanced in hybrid and conventional conflict with an expanding arsenal of nuclear weapons.
India's rising inequality: Government should work toward a workable wealth tax
One of the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations calls for a reduction in inequality. On that count, India must exert more by making the income tax net wider and ensuring a lower indirect tax burden
Gandhi to Modi: The debasement of India’s political discourse
Contrast this exchange against the utterly crass and debased rhetoric, both during the election season and otherwise, that India’s political and cultural leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, employ.
Unveiling the complexities of Naxalism: Socio-economic disparities, violence, and resistance in contemporary India
The narratives elucidate how historical marginalisation, compounded by contemporary socio-economic inequities, lays fertile ground for the propagation of Naxalite ideology, which promises liberation from caste-based oppression and economic deprivation.
War drums in the Middle East are bad news for the economy
The war clouds just keep getting thicker and darker. And the warmongers have so far outshouted those pleading for peace. The leaders have failed to bring any sanity, let alone ceasefire or peace talks. All this does not bode well for the Indian economy, which has already been struggling with the challenges of inflation, stagnant private investment, high youth unemployment and widening inequality.
