The high turnout for the recent general election indicates that the Pakistani public is warming up to democracy. But participation is a double-edged sword: by virtue of having had its voice heard, the public now has heightened expectations of government performance. If Sharif fails to deliver, public disaffection could set in rather quickly and powerfully. […]
The message to my friends in India that we have a lot of love and affection for you all. We must become good friends and hold each other’s hands … let us make a new beginning, let us sit down together and let us resolve that we will from now onwards resolve all our outstanding […]
The rise of Sharif’s Muslim League is a golden opportunity for a civilian government to build consensus with other political parties and wrest control of domestic, foreign and security policy from the military. Read Here – Gulf News
India cannot afford to be complacent in spite the fact that the issue has been resolved in a win-win manner, as the Chinese media claims. In fact, the Ladakh border episode will be regarded as a watershed in the bilateral relations. India is faced with a new reality of having to deal with an assertive […]
Whichever party takes power in Islamabad will almost certainly have to cobble together a coalition to rule. The new government will inherit a looming foreign-exchange crisis, hours-long blackouts that have provoked street riots, and overlapping insurgencies and sectarian wars that have claimed thousands of lives. Though army chief Ashfaq Parvez Kayani has resisted the temptation to […]
INDIA will soon have a fifth of the world’s working-age population. But many are worried that it is squandering its opportunity. During the boom of the 1990s and 2000s it became fashionable to talk of India’s demographic dividend – evoking the experiences of East Asia. There, working-age populations rose at the same time as the […]
One hopes China has genuinely reconsidered picking a fight with India, a great power with which it shares a long land frontier. Beijing has created headaches aplenty for itself through its conduct in the South China Sea and East China Sea. The last thing it should do is open another axis along which to disperse energy […]
Brazil, one of the world’s largest emerging markets, achieved a major diplomatic victory with the election this week of its candidate, Roberto Azevedo, as director-general of the World Trade Organization. In this heavily disputed election, involving 159 member countries, Brazil cashed in on a long campaign, cultivating support among the developing countries of Africa, Asia, […]
China and India need to work harder to avoid flare-ups along their disputed border and resolve those that do happen more quickly, India’s top diplomat said Friday. On the second day of a visit to Beijing, External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid praised the relatively smooth resolution of a three-week standoff between border troops from either […]
If Pakistan‘s May 11 parliamentary elections unfold according to recent national opinion surveys, two-time prime minister Nawaz Sharif will once again take power in Islamabad. Deposed in a 1999 coup led by General Pervez Musharraf, Sharif fled for nearly a decade of Saudi-sponsored exile. Today, however, it is Musharraf who lives under house arrest just outside Islamabad […]
looking beyond borders 