Nepalese youth

Nepal’s Unemployment Crisis: Needed Transformational Leadership to Utilize Available Resources

Nepal's greatest shortage is not simply money or infrastructure; it is leaders who can use them well. Without the right leadership, resources remain locked in inefficiency, corruption, and bureaucratic gridlock.

Proxy Village Governance: The Pradhan Pati Problem in India's Democracy

It has been formally recognised in the Report of the Advisory Committee on Women Pradhans, Transforming Women’s Representation and Role in Panchayati Raj Institutions: Efforts to Eliminate Proxy Participation, which recorded that elected women representatives are often “represented by their husbands or male relatives” and recommended the imposition of stringent and exemplary penalties to curb such practices.

India's Student Revolt: South Asia Has Seen This Before

When economic transformation outpaces institutional renewal anywhere in South Asia, the gap between aspiration and opportunity becomes fertile ground for frustration, alienation, and political discontent. The leaked papers in India were only the trigger 

India's Youth Eruption and Ham-Handed Governmental Response: Demeaning Student Power Can Prove Costly

The youth eruption is a consequence of pent-up anger and frustration of the government's indifference to the repeated leaks of exam question papers for which millions of doctor, engineer, police and civil service aspirants prepare for years.  Over 20 students have reportedly committed suicide after the NEET exam paper leak for which they had toiled for over a year

More on Public Policy and Governance

A film on Kashmir reignites old wounds

Beyond the number of deaths and whether to define the Pandits’ barbaric displacement as genocide, this is a chapter of contemporary Indian history that has received woefully inadequate media and scholarly attention, writes Mayank Chhaya for South Asia Monitor

The medicalisation of death: Isolation of the dying is cruel

"The unbalanced and contradictory picture of death and dying,” tells the tale of a society lost in modern medicine and unmindful of where this is taking us, write M.R. Rajagopal and Jagdish Rattanani for South Asia Monitor

Rahul Bajaj was a visionary, an industrialist who promoted Gandhian values

He used his annual presence in Davos to make a convincing tour de horizon of the great strengths and resilience of the Indian economy, writes Amb Bhaswati Mukherjee (retd) for South Asia Monitor

Cooked meals for the poor in India: An idea whose time has come

If the rural poor can be given a basic ‘thali’ at subsidized price, they will not only get proper food but do away with the drudgery of cooking, writes Anil K. Rajvanshi for South Asia Monitor

Film on Godse’s killing of Gandhi: Falsehoods galore

The real motive behind murdering Gandhi was that he was for inclusive nationalism, the dream of revolutionaries, and for his attempts to work against untouchability and caste inequality, writes Ram Puniyani for South Asia Monitor

'Learning from Ghalib about the world we live in': Cross-border collaboration around shared couplets

This unique India-Pakistan collaboration developed into this latest venture, “Thinking with Ghalib: Poetry for a New Generation”, a collection of 30 couplets with translation and commentary, write Anjum Altaf and Amit Basole for South Asia Monitor

Can the subcontinental deadlock be broken?

If the meeting of Indian and Pakistani officials—expected to take place next week as per a report in The Hindu– comes through, it will be a departure from the recent past as formal dialogue has remained frozen for almost two years, writes Shraddha Nand Bhatnagar for South Asia Monitor

Historic changes at India Gate and their significance

The Amar Jawan Jyoti -- an upturned rifle with a helmet customarily marking a battlefield grave -- amounted to nothing short of a poor apology for a war memorial at India Gate 

South Asia's divisive politics: Modi election speech stirs up an 'artificial' boundary issue between India and Nepal

India’s position on the boundary issue is “well known, consistent and unambiguous”, the Indian Embassy in Kathmandu said, days after political parties in Nepal stoked a simmering territorial dispute in Lipulekh, Limpiyadhura and Kalapani, especially after Prime Minister Narendra Modi mentioned road construction in Lipulekh at an election rally in Uttarakhand state

No travel ban; instead India offers vaccines, life-saving drugs to Africa

Even as most countries began slapping travel bans on African countries, India has offered support for Africa to combat the newly-emerged Omicron variant of the Covid-19 pandemic, including through supply of vaccines, life-saving drugs, PPE kits, gloves and ventilators

Cross red lines at your own peril in Pakistan: Message to opposition and media

The Asma Jahangir Conference in Pakistan last week sparked a somewhat balanced and much-needed discussion on the issues concerning the country

Rising above hate, a Hindu businessman and a Sikh gurdwara offer prayer space to Muslims

In a country known for its traditional inter-faith tolerance and harmony, one of the headline news for the last few months has been how groups of right-wing Hindus, supported by local leaders of India's ruling BJP of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, have been obstructing and protesting against the offering of namaz in public places by Muslim citizens in Gurugram, a satellite city of capital New Delhi

Decoding Pakistan NSA Moeed Yusuf's refusal to attend India-hosted regional conference on Afghanistan

On 15 August 2021, the day the Taliban seized power militarily in Kabul, the world watched with trepidation the scenes of an ignominious end to the twenty-year-long efforts of the US to prop up a democratic government there

A Middle East Quad? Scope for synergies, but divergences over Iran

Within the new Middle East/West Asia Quad, there is space for trilateral economic cooperation between India, the UAE and Israel

Fake tea issue: Solution to Indian tea industry's problems lies in cooperation with Nepal and Bangladesh

India should assist Nepal and Bangladesh to obtain GI certification for their teas