Scarcity of cooking fuel is pushing people, particularly across South Asia, toward hunger. Livelihoods have been lost among the large unorganised labour force while thousands of self-employed street vendors, smaller restaurants and eateries are being forced to close shop, facing a scary, insecure future. For middle class households across India…
India’s multi-dimensional and wide-ranging relationship with Russia, with strategic issues, defence and energy security as bulwarks, has been one of the critical pillars of its foreign policy, one it will try to ensure remains vibrant and mutually beneficial and supportive during Putin’s visit, despite pressures. If, additionally, it can gain…
While there would be several strategic reasons for India to invite Muttaqi to India, New Delhi’s decision is being seen by women of Afghanistan as a betrayal. Under the Taliban’s misogynist edicts, women have been deprived of most human rights, including the right to education and assembly, reduced to faceless entities in the background where…
Which is why, the recent attacks on the ancestral homes of Tagore and Satyajit Ray, who are Indian but are also both global icons of Bengali culture, indicate considerable confusion in the thinking that is guiding Bangladesh policy since Hasina fled Dhaka. Has Islam and the Islamic identity subsumed the Bengali identity and culture of…
The absence of any form of engagement with Pakistan other than military has narrowed India’s options substantially. As a sovereign state, Pakistan cannot be seen to nor will it bow to coercive tactics. The current Indian establishment’s perennially punitive approach to Pakistan and efforts to humiliate it as an object of domestic ridicule has…
It was interesting to observe how focused party representatives and voters in this small northeastern state bordering Bangladesh were on basic development issues; and how vocal voters are in seeking their basic rights at the local level, perhaps showing what genuine grassroots democracy should reflect.
Interestingly, strategies employed during the Covid pandemic are being replicated. Much like the Cowin app was used to track and monitor Covid vaccinations, the Indian government plans an app to monitor every eligible child to ensure that they are up to date with their vaccination schedules
It remains unclear why no leader from India’s closest neighbour Bangladesh has ever been a chief guest at the Republic Day parade, writes Nilova Roy Chaudhury for South Asia Monitor
The government’s vaccination outreach to remote border areas, in Kashmir and the Northeast, and the local people's smiling embrace of these efforts was an indication of their comfort level and confidence in the Indian system, writes Nilova Roy Chaudhury for South Asia Monitor
Hasina's government has also been very distressed with provisions in the Indian Citizenship Amendment Act, which singles out Bangladesh, along with Pakistan and Afghanistan, as nations which persecute their minorities, writes Nilova Roy Chaudhury for South Asia Monitor
