Suchergebnisse

On Tuesday 22 August 2023, Professor Rahul Mukherji, head of the Department of Political Science at the South Asia Institute at Heidelberg University, addressed the Institute on the democratic backsliding India has experienced under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Professor Mukherji believes that Indian democracy has devolved into a 'competitive-authoritarian' hybrid; 'competitive' in that the opposition […]

In his third edition of "India after Gandhi," historian Ramachandra Guha argues that India is now in the middle of its fourth crisis since independence. While India may navigate its way through, this crisis will leave deep scars.

Global investors interviewed by Bloomberg see great profit potential in the India market—and of course they may be right. Their play is on India's financial economy. But that is not quite the same thing as making a bet on India's real economy.
The post Is India the New China? appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI.

India recognises that its ambition to be a global power cannot be achieved unless it becomes technologically advanced. Indian leaders have known since independence that technology is key to developing the country and are very ...

On 11th August 2023, India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 ('DPDP Act') has received Presidential assent. The Act's passing is critical in light of increasing concerns about data security and surveillance in India, including allegations that the government has illegally been using spyware against activists. Moreover, the government and its agencies are major data fiduciaries, having access to various identification and biometric data that have in the past been breached on a large scale. Given this, it is vital that the DPDP Act is able to function effectively and independently against the government in cases of non-compliance. However, a novel provision bestowing appellate jurisdiction on a Tribunal that lacks both the necessary expertise and independence is likely to hinder this goal.

Despite widespread optimism about the future of the U.S.-India partnership, relations are considerably more fragile than they might appear. Indeed, the two countries continue to experience friction in several areas that, if left unaddressed, could ultimately undermine or even derail future cooperation.

 To be fair, the friendship was always either nascent or tenuous at best.  That Canada is host to the largest Sikh population outside of India, and like many diasporas, more enthused for more extreme political ends than those back home would set the tension level on "not good" anyway.  Then you add in that India is  ruled by the Hindu Nationalist Party and by Modi, so any friction becomes much hotter and much more useful for domestic political purposes back home.One can start on either side of the Indo-Pacific region on this.  Because my own start as a scholar of the international relations of ethnic politics, which included some study of South Asia, came long before my move to Canada, I will start with the India side. Modi and his party got into power by engaging in ethnic outbidding, by promising to be the best defenders of the Hindu majority, which meant, of course, targeting minorities of all kinds as threats that needed to be put in their place. So, Muslims have paid a significant price for this in India. It has meant in foreign policy that Canada is seen as a real problem, rather than Canada's self-image as the less imperial Commonwealth country that everyone loves more than the US (Canadians take great pride that Americans will put on a Canadian flag on their backpacks when the US is governed by a Bush or Trump).  In Modi's eyes, Canada is a supporter of Sikh separatism. That Sikhs in Canada are politically powerful and use that power to support separatism in the homeland.  Yes, Sikhs are powerful--Trudeau at one point had four Sikhs in his cabinet, far out of proportion to their population, but their population is not small.  Trudeau kept an awful Minister of National Defence because he didn't want to offend a key constituency and source of campaign dollars.  And, yes, an Air India flight was blown up by Canadian-based Sikhs.  The intelligence services and the cops messed up before and afterwards.  So, Indian fans of Modi cite that event as Canada being a base of anti-India terrorism.  The more accurate charge is that Canada continues to be lousy at stopping the flow of money to extremists of all kinds, but, no, Canada is not a place where Sikhs have bases to train for future terrorist attacks. Canada is not Afghanistan of 2001.  Turning to the Canadian side, some folks are accusing Trudeau of playing this up and publicizing this for political gain.  And that is, well, laughable.  There are two dynamics here that are intersecting.  The first is, yes, this government (and any other) would be pandering to Sikh voters, and, yes, significant numbers of folks in this community were asking for the government to take more seriously India's role in the death of Hardeep Singh Nijjar.  The other dynamic is that the Trudeau government has faced much criticism for being slow to deal with China's election interference. So, there has been pressure for Trudeau to act faster.Still, this government did not act precipitously in this case. They did not go public as soon as they got a hint of this.  Instead, they worked their allies, and they sent several folks over to India to get their support for an investigation, including Canada's National Security and Intelligence Advisor, Jody Thomas. They were rebuffed. It seems clear that the government would have liked to have continued to handle this quietly, but they got alerted that a reporter was going to release a story on this.  With more stories coming out that the US was the country that had provided some signals intel to Canada that supported the India connection in Nijjar's death, I am pretty convinced that, yes, India through its intelligence services had this guy killed, directly or indirectly. I am biased in this, as I have long been suspicious of Modi and his Hindu National party.  But the pattern of events seems to make it clear that there is more than just a little something to this. While India can be upset that Sikhs in Canada protest against India and support Sikh separatism, and that politicians took the sides of protesters in India over changes in agriculture policy last year, none of that justifies killing a Canadian citizen on Canadian territory. This is not what friends do to each other.  Unless something happened that I am not aware of, at no point did the British whack any fundraiser in Boston seeking to support the Irish Republican Army.  Modi did this because he is arrogant, and he may be right that he can get away with it since the US needs India in its anti-China containment efforts. And, yes, he would not be the first autocratic-leaning leader to bully Canada. It has been open season for some time with China, Russia, and the Saudis taking turns, with the Iranians also engaged in election interference.My pals in Ottawa who work in and near the intel scene are pretty outraged at how lamely this government and previous ones have dealt with such stuff. I am not sure better reactions would have mattered that much since the asymmetries in these situations are pretty stark, but, yes, Canada can do better on protecting its citizens, including those in the various diaspora communities, than it has.I don't expect things to get better between India and Canada. Modi is scoring a lot of points on this at home. Trudeau is not, but he is stuck. I have often wondered why his government pandered so much to Sikhs when there are also other Indian-Canadians here, and that pandering to one side might be problematic for the other. In this case, where a Canadian was killed, taking this seriously is less about the pandering of the past and more of the challenge of defending Canadians from backsliding democracies. 

History was made this week when India made the first-ever landing on the moon's south pole. A 26-kilogram rover called Pragyan ('wisdom') arrived in lunar orbit aboard India's Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft and was carried to the ...

The Economics Department at India's Ashoka University received an unexpected visit from the Federal Intelligence Bureau. The reason for this visit was a paper titled 'Democratic Backsliding in the World's Largest Democracy' by Sabyasachi Das, an economist. In his research, Das meticulously examined 11 contested seats during India's 2019 general elections and uncovered imbalanced outcomes that favored the ruling party, BJP. Das noted that 'the results point to strategic and targeted electoral discrimination against Muslims, in the form of deletion of names from voter lists and suppression of their votes during election, in part facilitated by weak monitoring by election observers.' The subsequent visit by the Federal Intelligence Bureau is just one among several incidents that highlight the precarious state of academic freedom in India.

The Raisina Dialogue, India's flagship conference on geopolitics and geoeconomics, was held from 21 to 23 February this year, and discussions on and around the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) took centre stage. Indian Minister of ...

Since 2014, under the rule of the Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a new chapter has being authored in India's history, whereby the country has come to deviate from the basic principles of democracy, minority rights, and executive accountability. This needs greater recognition and urgent action.

India appears poised to scrap the country's cabotage law as part of an effort to promote domestic shipping, and other countries have relaxed similar restrictions in recent years. The United States should follow in their footsteps.

Rarely have two major democracies descended into as ugly a diplomatic spat as the one now unfolding between Canada and India. With the traditionally friendly relationship already at its lowest point ever, both sides are ...

Swaminathan S. Anklesaria Aiyar


Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is in the United States for a state visit that is expected to highlight India's importance as a rising economic and military power, and the only country in Asia that can be a counter to China in the 21st century. Modi's Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) has long promoted its Hindu nationalist agenda by claiming that India was the world's richest region under glorious Hindu rule for thousands of years before being conquered by Muslim invaders in the 11th century and British invaders in the 18th century. The BJP says foreign invaders transformed a sone ki chidiya—a golden bird—into an impoverished chattel. Modi has promised to make India a great world power again, and his U.S. visit aims to be a step in that direction.
The BJP often cites historian Angus Maddison, who estimated that India accounted for 32 percent of world GDP in 1 CE (during the Hindu period), a share that sank to just 4 percent by the time British rule ended in 1947. However, the BJP is cherry picking data from Maddison's work to create a false historical narrative of a once‐​rich country impoverished by foreign invaders. For a full picture, read my new Cato Policy Analysis, "Indian Nationalism and the Historical Fantasy of a Golden Hindu Period."
A close look at Maddison's magnum opus, Contours of the World Economy 1–2030 AD: Essays in Macro‐​Economic History, tells a less flattering story. India's high share of world GDP in 1 CE was due mainly to its high share (33.2 percent) in world population. Since this yielded a GDP share of 32 percent, India per capita income was slightly below the world average at just $450 per year. This did not rise at all in a thousand subsequent years of Hindu rule. So, this supposedly golden period was one of stark poverty and economic stagnancy. Conditions were almost as bad in the rest of the world. High mortality, arising from disease, drought, and war kept India's population stagnant at 75 million for a thousand years till 1000 CE. Simply staying alive was a challenge.
Under Muslim and British rule, India's GDP edged up. Falling mortality rates meant a significant rise in the population too. This rising population partly offset the rise in GDP, so per capita income grew slowly. Maddison estimates it at $550 in 1700, towards the end of the Muslim period. This edged up to $619 by the time British rule ended. Progress was very slow in the thousand years of Muslim and British rule yet was better than the stagnancy in the preceding thousand years of Hindu rule.
Colonial‐​era history books spoke of the great blessings that British imperialism had brought to India. Maddison's figures show those claims to be absurd. But they also disprove the claim that colonial rule impoverished India.
After becoming independent, India's GDP rose much faster and mortality rate fell more dramatically than ever before. By 2003, says Maddison, India's per capita income was up to $2,160. Both in terms of income and life expectancy, India's golden period—if you can call it that—is today, not in the ancient Hindu past.
India is still a lower middle‐​income country, but in PPP (purchasing power parity) terms is already the third largest economy in the world. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund estimate that it was the fastest‐​growing major economy in the world in 2022 and will continue to be so this year. It runs a fiercely independent foreign policy and has refrained from condemning Russia for invading Ukraine. India is a major buyer of Russian oil. Even so the United States sees India as an important strategic partner, though not an ally. That is why Modi's visit is expected to include the signing of military deals for U.S. supply and coproduction of high‐​tech aircraft engines and drones. Despite foreign policy disagreements and worries about the suppression of dissent and liberal values in India, the United States wants to help Modi build an India that will become a major Asian power that can check China's dominance.

Vital new dimensions overtake the 'C' cliches of Australia's old relationship with India—cricket, curry and Commonwealth. The new C words are community and commerce and contest in the Indo-Pacific—and China. Community is a concept broad ...