The role of China will have a direct bearing on the Indo-Pacific security matrix given China’s warm relations with most of the Indo-Pacific states
India’s Housing Challenge: Bridging the Gap Between Macro Development and Basic Needs
Aggressive migration of youth and workers to metro cities in search of better opportunities is common across the region. And so is the response deficit by local and central governments in providing them with basic, dignified lifestyles. The time has come for the elected representatives to think differently and narrow the gap between government schemes and results on the ground.
Digital Public Infrastructure in South Asia: A Bridge or a New Divide?
These achievements have positioned India as a digital governance exporter. Singapore, Nepal, Bhutan, France, Mauritius, Sri Lanka, and the United Arab Emirates have already established UPI connectivity, and more than 50 countries have expressed interest in replicating aspects of India Stack’s open digital infrastructure.
Who Governs Islamabad? A Capital Without its Governance
This raises the issue not whether Islamabad has surpassed its outmoded and fragmented administrative structure but whether governance would keep pace with its growth. Islamabad has to evolve from being administered as a capital city into being governed as a metropolis.
Whither Constitutional Equality and Laws Against Discrimination? A Manipuri Musician's Murder Raises Governance Questions Anew
The inhabitants of Manipur have had long-standing experiences of living insecurely in their own homeland, even as migrants from the Northeast have encountered prejudice in metropolitan India....India has produced a paradox where communities that belong formally to India can also face exclusion from the social mainstream.
More on Governance, Public Policy and Law
Kashmiri Pandits - Old and New: And how a film created a broad tent of a pan-Hindu identity
Why did the influential Purana Kashmiris not think of the 1990s Kashmir Pandit exodus as a personal issue and raise their voice? Why did they take part in the conspiracy of silence that seems to have cloaked the issue for 30 odd years?
Russia’s misadventure: Will it herald a setback for populists and return of liberal democracy?
One other unintended consequence of the potential failure of the Russian operation is that it could slow down - and possibly stop the triumphant march of the autocrats – or so-called strongmen - the world over, writes Frank Islam for South Asia Monitor
The aura of Bhagat Singh - and the neglected historiography of British colonial violence in India
The manner in which Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru were, first, officially executed on March 23, 1931, and their bodies brutally chopped, marks one of the darkest chapters of British colonialism in India
Will the Ukraine war be a major inflection point for India?
In Washington, Price acknowledged Monday at a briefing that India developed defence ties with Russia because the US was not ready for such a relationship when the Soviet Union and India drew close
US showing some understanding of India's delicate balancing act
The Biden administration and India are evolving a delicate balance at the centre of which is China on how New Delhi reacts to the Russia invasion of Ukraine
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
