India
Masood Azhar – a global terrorist – and the implications for Pakistan
Four times Masood Azhar escaped the formal designation as an international arch-terrorist. Each time India had sought to add his name to a UN Security Council blacklist as the…
Book review: unruly waters shape South Asia’s history
Book Review: Unruly Waters: How Mountains, Rivers and Monsoons Have Shaped South Asia’s History, by Sunil Amrith (Penguin, 2018)
As Sunil Amrith explains in…
India’s Congress party stares at extinction
India’s National Congress Party is facing an existential crisis, now suffering unprecedented consecutive electoral defeats. Once invincible and a political behemoth having ruled…
Modi’s second term: what it means for the South Pacific
The Bhartiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Narendra Modi has secured his second term as India’s Prime Minister with a landslide victory in the 2019 general elections. He spearheaded the…
As India tallies votes, Modi might win government but not the country
This past Sunday was the final phase of voting in India’s seven week election period, with the votes cast and stored on electronic voting machines to be collated on Thursday…
Young, energised, ready to vote, and maybe decide two elections
Two of the world’s democracies on either side of the Indian Ocean will see their elections culminate this weekend. Australians will go to the polls on Saturday, while Sunday marks…
The growing influence of celebrity politics in India
Celebrities and politics are so closely intertwined in India that entire books have been written about “Bollywood Star Power in Indian Politics”. Whether we are talking about…
India’s democracy draws strength from difference
At the end of a visit to India in the middle of a long and heated election campaign, the conversation with some young thinktank staff captured the country’s appetite for…
India: encouraging the rainbow vote
As the mammoth task of elections in India continue up to a 19 May deadline, the nation’s election commission is seeking a full turnout of the population – including the often…
Social media in India fans fake news
India’s election campaigning is in full swing and everything about the Indian general election is gigantic. This time, about 900 million people above the age of 18 will be…