If the age of men has ended, nobody told Asia. True, across the continent women are obtaining degrees at higher rates — in some cases outpacing men — and bucking traditional gender roles. Yet the past few decades have brought significant setbacks as well as breakthroughs. Men’s wages are now growing faster than women’s wages […]
A strong argument in favour of FDI in mammoth retail is that it will generate employment. Surely, it will. But we can’t let the question lie there. We must ask, for whom? Will it source employees from the unskilled, illiterate vegetable vendors who, akin to a capillary network, are spread across the length and breadth […]
A period of intense high-level exchange is commencing this week between Russia and its Central Asian allies – and Pakistan. What characterizes the Russian strategy is a robust attempt to develop comprehensive partnerships with these countries in preparation of the post-2014 scenario in Afghanistan with the expected withdrawal of the troops of the North Atlantic […]
Shortly before the fateful US intervention in Iraq that led to the downfall and the eventual execution of the then Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein, Brent Scowcroft, who had been the National Security Advisor to the first President Bush, wrote a perceptive piece of advice that was published in the Wall Street Journal on 15 August 2002. Advising […]
In the complex chessboard where the New Great Game in Eurasia is being played, both Kings are easy to identify: Pipelineistan, and the possible, multiple intersections of a 21st century Silk Road. Few have noticed a crucial meeting that took place during the recent Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit in Tehran, between senior Foreign Ministry diplomats […]
Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar‘s pro-democracy leader, is travelling to the US for the first time since she was put under house arrest in 1990 to receive the highest civilian honour in the US. The Nobel laureate, who begins her 18-day tour of the US on Monday, will be presented the Congressional Gold Medal and meet various […]
JOHN DARWIN has spent his whole career thinking about Pax Britannica. Three years after his magisterial study, “The Empire Project: The Rise and Fall of the British World-System, 1830-1970”, the Oxford historian has returned yet again to the subject. This time, though, his focus is different and the period he covers is longer. His new book […]
In a matter of weeks, the Australian government will release a White Paper entitled “Australia in the Asian Century.” According to my sources, the report will look at how Australia can best exploit future economic opportunities in the region focusing on China, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Indonesia and India. Conspicuously absent from the primary analysis […]
Sometimes, raw courage is the only way to break political gridlock. With a flurry of bold executive decisions yesterday on foreign investment — the most extensive policy changes since his government was re-elected in 2009 — Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India has rediscovered his reformist zeal. India’s consumers, media watchers and flyers will benefit from the Cabinet’s approval of […]
“It’s been a difficult year,” Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar acknowledged in an interview in her office in Islamabad last week. That’s a bit of an understatement for a first year on the job in which she has had to weather a series of diplomatic crises including turban-bomb assassinations, terrorist extraditions, and friendly-fire incidents. […]
looking beyond borders 