NewsTrust - India - Most Recent Stories: Opinion

Can Obama Save the Global Economy (and Globalization) at the G-20?

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Esquire - By Thomas P.M. Barnett - Sep. 25 (Opinion) - What does this "rebalancing" play from Washington amount to? In a nutshell, a near-term future in which America consumes less and China consumes a helluva lot more. But Obama's "framework" also promises diplomatic cover for all sides in this rebalancing process by empowering the International Monetary Fund to monitor G-20 member pledges and flag them for consultations if voluntary targets aren't being met. Since sanctions never work (even if Dmitri Medvedev and the West Wing think they're inevitable), this transparent approach is considered ideal — in effect, a multilateral version of the shaming technique historically employed by the IMF (and by the U.S. against mercantilist Japan in years past).

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Interview: Jaswant Singh

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Aljazeera - Sep. 02 (Interview) - "Theocentricism", where society is centred on Islam - this is in line whether Pakistan, India or Bangladesh, where faith is of paramount importance. Pakistan is not theocratic in the sense it is not the Mullah that is governing Pakistan ... but Pakistan society is governed by Islam.

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Bangladesh: Mourning Senator Edward Kennedy

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Global Voices - By Rezwan - Aug. 27 (Opinion) - Senator Edward Moore "Ted" Kennedy (February 22, 1932 – August 25, 2009), the second most senior member of the US Senate, died of cancer last Tuesday. Bloggers recall him as a true friend of Bangladesh and explain why Bangladeshis will remember him forever.

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A Scrap of Decency

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Bharati Chaturvedi - Aug. 05 (Opinion) - From India to Brazil to the Philippines, recyclers are experiencing a precipitous drop in income. Trash pickers and scrap dealers in Minas Gerais State in Brazil, for example, saw a decline of as much as 80 percent in the price of old magazines and 81 percent for newspapers, and a 77 percent drop in the price of cardboard from October 2007 to last December.

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Gojra, Quran, Jinnah, CIA and RAW

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

rupeenews.com - By Moin Ansari - Aug. 04 (Opinion) - he enemies of Pakistan are desperately trying to ignite civil unrest in the country. Years ago they used to attack Shia and Sunny places of worship to play havoc in the Pakistani society. The people of Pakistan have now learned and understood the enemy’s tactics. No one now start rioting against the other group after any such attack. Our enemies are using the likes of TTP and BLA to perpetuate bloodshed in Pakistan. But that plan is fast nearing its demise without producing any tangible results for the enemies. It is not unimaginable that the enemies might be trying to open a new front in their dirty war against the Pakistanis. The government should act swiftly to take the responsibles of this heinous crime in Gojra to the task and ensure a quick and maximum possible punishment for the criminals. Justice must be timely and visible to all or else it is the murder of justice itself. It is indeed reassuring that the CM Punjab has visited the affected area and vowed to bring the culprits to justice.

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Engaging Pakistan

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Times of India - Jul. 30 (Editorial) - Under attack from his critics in Parliament, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made a spirited defence of his policy of engaging Pakistan. He has revealed a policy shaped perhaps by short-term tactical considerations, but structured within the framework of an overarching strategic vision. Critics may question his commitment to engaging Pakistan as a show of weakness, but in the long run there is, as Singh pointed out, no other option save war. Even to discuss issues of importance to India such as terror emanating from Pakistan, it requires interlocutors in Islamabad.

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Pushing South Asia Toward the Brink

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

fpif.org - By Zia Mian - Jul. 27 (Opinion) - The contradictions and confusions in U.S. policy in South Asia were on full display during Secretary of State Hilary Clinton's recent visit to India. U.S. support for India, which centers on making money, selling weapons, and turning a blind eye to the country's nuclear weapons, is fatally at odds with U.S. policy and concerns about Pakistan. By enabling an India-Pakistan arms race, rather than focusing on resolving the conflict and helping them make peace, the United States is driving Pakistan toward the very collapse it fears.

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Clinton trip to India can build on Silicon Valley bonds

Sun, 19 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

San Jose Mercury News - Jul. 19 (Opinion) - Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's visit to India is expected to yield new initiatives in defense and space cooperation. Yet it is important to remember that the foundation for the U.S.-India geopolitical partnership that has emerged in the last decade was forged outside the realm of government policy and the confines of Washington and New Delhi. Silicon Valley entrepreneurs have played as important a role in building ties as any diplomat or national security official. And Clinton's trip provides a good opportunity to renew the important private-sector and societal linkages that help bind the relationship together.

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Election Defines a New India

Wed, 20 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Rahul Singh - May. 20 (Opinion) - India can be a depressing country, with its grinding poverty, festering slums, imploring — often deformed — beggars, and maddening bureaucracy. But there are times when, to the world’s astonishment, the curtain of gloom and despair lifts and the light shines through — and one feels proud to be an Indian.

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Pakistan's Existential Challenge

Tue, 12 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Opinion Journal (WSJ) - By Bret Stephens - May. 12 (Opinion) - About Iran, Henry Kissinger once asked whether the Islamic Republic was a country or a cause. About Pakistan, the question is whether it's a country or merely a space.

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Understanding Indian election politics

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Slate - By Miranda Kennedy - Apr. 30 (Opinion) - India's middle class may set the agenda in the media and in Washington, but the poor dominate Indian elections. That's because voter participation is highest among the rural, poor, and low caste. These voters are even more likely to participate in local elections—upward of 80 percent turn out for village council races—a stark contrast with the United States and other advanced democracies, where many more people vote for president than for city council.

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Dancing to the terrorists tune

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Dawn - By Jawed Naqvi - Apr. 07 (Opinion) - There is something worse than bad chemistry between the two. Their attention span for engaging in global brainstorming to weed out religious extremism appears limited compared to their ability to run each other down with mutual recrimination. Anyone can see that they are both victims of the most diabolical form of terrorism confronting the region. The world can see the pattern — that the bombing of the Serena Hotel in Kabul and the attack on the Indian embassy there, the truck bombing of the Marriott in Islamabad and the Taj Mahal and Oberoi in Mumbai, the close calls that Gen Musharraf and other politicians survived and the looming threats to harm Indian politicians, mostly have roots in the border areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

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The Silence Surrounding Sri Lanka

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

TruthOut - By Arundhati Roy - Mar. 31 (Opinion) - There is almost no reporting in the international press - or in the mainstream media in India, where I live - about what is happening. From the little information that is filtering through, it looks as though the Sri Lankan government is using the propaganda of "the war on terror" as a fig leaf to dismantle any semblance of democracy in the country and commit unspeakable crimes against the Tamil people.

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Land of My Dreams

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Boston Review - By Martha Nussbaum - Mar. 27 (Opinion) - I am tempted to say, somewhat hyperbolically, that virtually the only place in today’s India where Gandhi’s ideas are being duly honored is on the campus of Jamia. But Hasan knows, like Gandhi, and like Martin Luther King, Jr., that anger will not go away, will not cease to create the possibility of violence, unless the subordination that fuels it is brought to an end.

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Dam Politics: India's Leading Activist Medha Patkar Takes on Corporate Control of Water

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Democracy Now - By Medha Patkar, Amy Goodman - Mar. 23 (Interview) - when these centers, whether within India or outside India, such as the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the bilaterals, such as the USAID, the KfW, and whatnot, or ECD of Japan, which is now ODA, all of them come in with their money and their market interests and, you know, somewhere, apparently, state that this is joining the borrower country in achieving the public purpose, but in reality achieve the private purpose of their firms, their lending, their investments. Then the investment of the land, water, forests, of the minerals and the groundwater underneath, and of the human power itself, by the communities in this so-called borrower country, is always ignored bypassed, and not even properly valued and, rather, is destroyed for the private profits rather than serving the public purpose.

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Why we said pants to India's bigots

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Nisha Susan - Feb. 15 (Opinion) - The rules keep changing. Anger is never permitted because friends, on any point of the political spectrum, will say that you are lucky: what about the woman who walks 15 kilometres for water? So it amused us to embrace the worst slurs, to send pretty packages of intimate garments to men who say they hate us.

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Consortium of Pub-going, Loose and Forward Women

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Canadian Broadcasting - Feb. 15 (Interview) - We started off this part of our show by setting up the scene two weeks ago at the Amnesia Lounge, a pub in the southern Indian city of Mangalore. Men belonging to a group called Sri Ram Sena -- or Army of God -- walked into the pub and attacked a group of young women inside. Sri Ram Sena has been linked to India's growing right-wing Hindu movement. And to the attackers, the women's mere presence in the pub was an affront to what they see as proper Indian culture. Mangalore is a college town and an I.T. and call-centre hub - not the kind of place you'd expect an attack like this to happen. And yet the perpetrators were brazen enough to contact local television stations in advance to invite them to film the attack. But women like Nisha Susan aren't backing down in the face of it. She's a journalist and founding member of the provocatively named group called Consortium of Pub-Going, Loose and Forward Women. She was in Delhi for the show.

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Obama Must Press Agreement on Israelis and Palestinians

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Nathan Gardels, Brzezinski - Jan. 02 (Interview) - In order to get beyond the stunningly superficial analyses of the Israeli-Hamas conflict one might find on MSNBC's Morning Joe, I called up Zbigniew Brzezinski -- former national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter, Obama supporter and eminence gris of American geostrategic thinkers -- to offer him a serious opportunity to talk about the challenges to Obama in facing this Middle East mess.

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Does community service really change anything?

Mon, 29 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Christian Science Monitor - By Raj Mundra - Dec. 29 (Opinion) - What are the crucial social issues? The answers to those questions are complex. And listening was crucial for participants. Dust swirled as we trudged through the littered, stifling streets of Dharavi, in Mumbai, India. Climbing a ladder to the windowless room that a family of six calls home, I thought: What does this impoverished community really get from our school's efforts at community service? What long-term benefit does any underserved community truly derive from Phillips Academy's – or any other organization's – outreach efforts? What differentiates well-intended programs to encourage global citizenship from those that seem more like "cultural tourism," and resume-building for high schoolers? Phillips Academy high school students and faculty were toiling for Niswarth, a program where students go to Mumbai ( Bombay) for three weeks to study urban development and serve in one of Asia's poorest areas. Niswarth is the Hindi translation of Philips' motto non sibi or "not for self." This year, Phillips' students, partnered with Indian high schoolers and two nongovernmental organizations, were challenged to create a one-day project for this specific community. They were invited into shanties to practice the complex skill of observing without judgment. Everyone looks poor – but what is poverty? What are the root causes for almost 10 million people in Mumbai living in these conditions? What are the crucial social issues?

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Terrorists sexually humiliates Guests, Esp. Foreigners, before killing them

Sun, 28 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

allvoices.com - By Kuldeep - Dec. 28 (Press Release) - Mumbai (India): According to the newspaper Bangalore Mirror, police have distributed photographs of the recent Mumbai terrorist attacks to various news agencies that are very disturbing. These photographs continue to unravel the many secrets of the carnage.

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Tensions Rising Between Pakistan and India

Fri, 26 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Outside the Beltway - By Dave Schuler - Dec. 26 (Comment) - The news from Pakistan and India isn’t exactly the sort to promote Christmas cheer. The tensions between the two countries, on hair trigger since the attacks in Mumbai last month with Indian officials blaming the attacks on Pakistan and Pakistani officials denying it vehemently, have ratcheted up another notch.

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The year we really came out

Fri, 26 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Livemint - By Parmesh Shahani - Dec. 26 (Opinion) - The past two decades have seen tremendous progress within the queer rights movement in India. The battle has been fought on several overlapping activist fronts, through organizations such as Sangama (Bangalore), which follows a human rights-based approach, and the Humsafar Trust (Mumbai), which focuses on health-based intervention. This has run in parallel with the continuing legal struggle for the modification of section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which effectively criminalizes same-sex relationships. Alongside the activism, there has also been a great deal of social change, especially in cities such as Mumbai, New Delhi and Bangalore. The Gay Bombay parties, Delhi’s Nigah Media Festival and Bangalore’s Gay Running and Breakfast (GRAB) club are just the tip of the iceberg—all big Indian cities today have vibrant, active and diverse queer scenes, the listings for which are easily available on the Web, or in some cases, in the local TimeOut. While developments such as these have taken place at a steady pace over the past two decades, 2008 could be considered the tipping point.

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The drum beating in Kashmir

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

International Herald Tribune - By H.D.S. Greenway - Dec. 17 (Opinion) - Pakistan is not going to bow down before India, and although there have been some arrests, there is not the political will necessary in Pakistan to thoroughly dismantle Lashkar.

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9 Is Not 11 (And November Isn't September)

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Arundhati Roy, Amy Goodman - Dec. 15 (Interview) - while the attacks in Mumbai may have a lot to do with the consequences of 9/11 and India positioning itself as a quote-unquote “natural ally” of Israel and the US, it has more to do with the history—a very troubled history here. And for us to try and reduce it into something like 9/11, as though, you know, we’ve not suffered a terrorist attack since Pearl Harbor, is to make this history a bit ridiculous and to not look things in the eye and to try and act as though we aren’t who we are and we don’t have the history that we do. And it doesn’t get anybody anywhere. It’s a very dishonest thing to do, in many ways, and also it paves the way towards people trying to behave—I mean, in any case, India—you know, the Indian establishment and the Indian elite are very delighted with the idea of pretending to be a superpower like America and wanting to act like a superpower like America and do all the stupid superpower things that America has done. So my point is that, you know, India isn’t America, and Pakistan isn’t Afghanistan, and we don’t have to look at this through borrowed lenses.

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Mumbai was not our 9/11

Sat, 13 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Arundhati Roy - Dec. 13 (Opinion) - ...But November isn't September, 2008 isn't 2001, Pakistan isn't Afghanistan and India isn't America. So perhaps we should reclaim our tragedy and pick through the debris with our own brains and our own broken hearts so that we can arrive at our own conclusions

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