Courtesy: Rita Willaert/Flickr
While the rejection by Odisha’s Gram Sabhas of mining projects in the state indicates the triumph of direct democracy, concerns that international investors will shun India due to the fear of unfavourable conditions are rife. How can we work towards both greater democracy and mining projects necessary for growth?
Courtesy: Asia Briefing
China ranks fourth globally for retail development, while India’s retail development ranking fell nine spots from the 2012 GRDI to 14th overall after experiencing backlash from the global economic slowdown. A comparison of India and China’s retail sectors reveals some lessons for retailers in both markets.
Courtesy: India Briefing
The U.S. economy is recovering, and the dollar strengthening, the lack of which has been behind much of the Global Financial Crisis over the past four years, and one that is largely responsible for the slowdown in China’s manufacturing. This is not a crisis, it’s a rebalancing, and the same is true for India.
Pankaj Saran, India’s High Commissioner to Bangladesh, talks to Gateway House about the current relationship between the two countries and the prominent issues that need to be addressed for a durable partnership.
Courtesy: Foreign Affairs
In Indian politics, caste and religion still matter, but in many states, economic competence now matters more. Things look bad in New Delhi, but the capital is not the whole of India.
Courtesy: Harry S. Truman Library and Museum/ Wikimedia Commons
This daily column includes Gateway House’s Badi Soch – big thought – of the day’s foreign policy events. This Badi Soch deliberates on the timing of the CIA’s admission of involvement in overthrowing Iran’s Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953 and the implications of this disclosure
Courtesy: Ronnie Hall/Flickr
Liberalism is a politics of hope, mutuality, compromise and reason. If that has been replaced by a politics of fear, egotism, polarisation and unreason, it is India’s elites that are responsible. How can liberalism be made an object of mass politics in India?
Courtesy: UK Ministry of Defence/Flickr
The war on terror and the global financial crisis have tilted the balance of authority on the side of the state, which the liberating forces of cyber space have only partially counteracted. Can the forces of liberalisation prevail over the forces of incipient oppression?
Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons
Over the past 30 years, Indian liberals have shed their values of tolerance, reason and dialogue. The rise of fundamentalism, strident socio-political discourse, and post-modernist individualism also indicate the decline of the liberal ethos. This is a threat to India’s vibrant philosophical liberal tradition
Courtesy: Dipayan Bhattacharjee/Flickr
The reforms of the early 1990s did not bring economic freedom to a majority of the population. That explains a large proportion of the economic and social ills that affect India today. Why is economic life in India of the ‘Taliban type’? Why is illiberal thought still our guiding principle?
