Al-Qaida's aging leaders are struggling to compete for recruits with Islamic State. Nevertheless, India must prepare itself for all sorts of terrorist threats, not least terrorist re-emergence in Afghanistan. What role might NATO play in this?
As the political turmoil in Pakistan continues to unfold, the underlying implications for India-Pakistan relations are discouraging.
Could Delhi be solving the wrong problem? What it chooses to define as a law and order problem is essentially a governance crisis of severe proportions and one that the Indian state is not yet willing to acknowledge.
The governance process seems to be running smoothly. Modi’s public announcement on corruption “Na khaunga na khane dunga’ (Neither would I pocket money illegally nor allow others to do it) is laudable, though only time will prove if he walks his talk.
With the economy under control – Standard and Poor has recently raised India’s credit outlook to ‘stable’ – Modi is free to indulge in international relations.
The knee jerk reaction from India’s intellectuals to the advent of a new government has been to profess a concern for ‘liberal order’. But we need to think about the space for dissent and divergent opinion in more nuanced ways.
India has moderated its position on the Israel-Palestine conflict over time, exchanging statements of condemnation for those “expressing concern”. But behind India’s strategic balancing act there also lies a precise domestic calculus.
With a new government in Delhi, India’s urban agenda is now focused on the creation of “Smart Cities” in industrial corridors. Such an initiative is driven by the demand of foreign investors to find sanitized spaces in developing countries in which they can operate easily – unhampered by politics.
India's economy and business climates continue to be hindered by the inability to provide sustainable and reliable electricy. But Modi has the opportunity to finally power India.
In 2013, openDemocracy published Pradeep Baisakh’s interview with Arvind Kejriwal, charting his transition from Gandhian social activist to politician. One year on, Baisakh writes an open letter to the leader of the Aam Admi party, urging him to once again take up Gandhian principles.
This statutory nature of the Sharia begins to emerge, paradoxically, in the colonial British courts. It is this legacy that led to a reimagining of the role of Sharia, that now plagues the modern Muslim nation state.
