The remote district of Rovieng was once a battleground between Cambodian government troops and Pol Pot‘s genocidal Khmer Rouge. Unexploded bombs still lurk in its fields and forests. So does something more desirable – iron ore – and supposedly in such huge quantities two Chinese companies have an $11-billion plan to extract it. Their proposal – […]
SMALLISH countries are often in the vanguard when it comes to reforming government. In the 1980s Britain was out in the lead, thanks to Thatcherism and privatisation. Tiny Singapore has long been a role model for many reformers. Now the Nordic countries are likely to assume a similar role. Read Here – The Economist
Whatever may be said about India, it is obvious that no structural transformation of our largely poverty-stricken economy has occurred and what is more, none seems very likely in the immediate future. Not only have three decades of high GDP growth gone unaccompanied by a societal transformation, we seem to have regressed on certain fronts. Read […]
Mongolia has repeatedly insisted that it wants to open its doors for business to all countries with a genuine interest in participating in the country’s sustainable growth. How much of this policy is lip service though and how fair is the bidding process for prospective foreign investors? Mongolia’s long awaited initial public offering (IPO) for its lucrative […]
India and the rest of the world need to understand that Myanmar is just at the beginning of the road to democracy, and that its present Constitution does not make the road smooth, says Aung San Suu Kyi In an interview to Nirupama Subramanian, Myanmar’s icon of democracy says that she looks forward to rebuilding democratic ties between […]
The Middle East is undergoing a historic transformation. Parts of the region are up in flames, and Asia’s primary powers either have no role or a destructive one. Pakistan, Indonesia and other Asian Muslim countries, as well as India, with the world’s second-largest Muslim population, are largely uninvolved, as if events in the region have no […]
It’s been 20 years since I’ve been in Mongolia, the large country of high desert plains sandwiched between China and Russia, and much has changed. Some, education and food supply, is for the better, and a lot – including urban sprawl and rising inequality – is for the worse. Much of the change has to […]
Indian companies which invested in controversial deals involving hundreds of thousands of acres of land in Ethiopia have found themselves out of their depth in a fast-growing African economy that is still in the process of building critical transport and irrigation networks. Read Here – The Hindu
While the eurozone debt crisis hangs like a dark cloud over the global economy, a grey cloud is emerging in China with deep consequences for the states of the Gulf Cooperation Council: the prospect of a hard landing. Read Here – The National
Across Africa, oil, gas and minerals are being discovered more often than ever before. Nowhere is the global commodities boom being felt more acutely. Over the next decade, billions of dollars will flow into countries previously starved of financial capital, Kofi Annan writes. Read Here – International Herald Tribune
looking beyond borders 