Marginalia, Nida-e Haq

Tough Days Ahead for India? The regional economic and political developments may have near-immediate affect on the Indian economy, apart from the internal pressures.   The recent regional economic and political crises in south Asia, most of them in immediate neighbours of India, have raised concern amongst the Indian establishment. The economic turbulence in Sri Lanka, Nepal and Maldives and the political turmoil in Pakistan may affect India manifold.   The economic impact of the various crises is expected to begin manifesting themselves soon, if governments of those countries fail to address the crises quickly.   To accord priority to India’s neighbours in their international activities, programmes and projects, was stressed at the first ever Inter-Ministerial Coordination Group (IMCG) meeting organised on April 12 in New Delhi.    Sri Lanka’s economic woes The economic turmoil in Sri Lanka is currently viewed as the most pressing foreign challenge by the MEA w...

The Clash Within the Civilisation The Russian-Ukraine war has been instrumental to forge a new narrative of the world and how it is going to transform, very soon.   It seems as if the Russia-Ukraine war has rendered the seminal work by Samuel Huntington  The Clash of Civilisations,  as completely wrong. As the narrative painted by him 30 years earlier, and which occupied the central place in the world politics particularly by the western liberals has not happened. Instead of a clash of the civilisations, it is now a clash within the civilisation i.e. white, European and Orthodox Christians fighting amongst them.  In an interview to George Eaton for the  New Statesman , political theorist Noam Chomsky describes the on going war between Russia and Ukraine as “monstrous” for Ukraine.    Chomsky, who has never condemned any anti-Western government, unhesitatingly denounces Vladimir Putin’s “criminal aggression”. But adds that to answer the question, o...

India charting its own path The last one-month has shown the tenacity and astuteness of the Indian foreign policy, and the “correctional change” which the current polity is trying to achieve through it.   Last week saw a flurry of diplomatic activities in New Delhi, with quite a large number of foreign ministers and security advisers coming over to convince the Indian leadership to change its stand on the Russia-Ukraine war and support the western coalition against Russia.   The week also saw stern condemnation and accusation of the Indian stand by the US leaders and India responding in a befitting diplomatically astute manner. Before the arrival of the US Deputy NSA on Economics, Daleep Singh to India, the US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo urged nations to stand on the right side of history, and not fund, fuel and aid President Putin’s war, on Wednesday 30 March.   On his part Singh in his meetings with Union Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal and Foreign Secretary Harsh S...

Urdu: Whose Language Is It? 27 March 2022 marks the completion of two hundred years of Urdu journalism. The first Urdu newspaper Jam-i Jahan Numa published its first edition from Kolkata on 27 March 1822.    The occasion, when Urdu journalism is celebrating 200 years of its existence, seems to be perhaps the best opportunity to clear some myths and misconceptions about Urdu. Urdu is a language, which was born and flourished in India. However, unfortunately following in the footsteps of the colonial masters, the new rulers of India too, demarcated languages on the basis of religion. Though in reality no language needs any religion to flourish but religions need a language to flourish.   In Urdu’s case nothing can be far from the truth. It was a language, which was patronised by all sections of the society, irrespective of their religion. But petty mindedness clubbed it together with a particular community. The colonial masters ascribed Hindi to Hindus and Urdu to Muslims, ...

India acts big brother to Sri Lanka The recent Indian initiatives to smaller regional neighbours like Maldives and Sri Lanka proves that the Indian foreign policy has matured and is delivering results by bringing these neighbours nearer to India.   Indian policy in the region towards smaller countries, seems to be paying dividends, as compared to China, which is more and more is being seen as a hawk, intent on taking over smaller countries’ natural resources.    The recent example of this is the manner in which India has handled Sri Lanka, a neighbour under extreme financial burden. Ties between two neighbours expanded to another level during the visit to India by Sri Lankan Finance Minister Basil Rajapaksa.  He met Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar in New Delhi. Later in the day an announcement was made of a $1 billion credit facility to Sri Lanka on 17 March, which is in the midst of a severe economic crisis trigger...

Afghan mineral wealth attracts competitors Afghanistan’s mineral wealth might be able to help the Taliban to bankroll its developmental plans. Even when the American occupation of Afghanistan was in full steam and apart from the fighting there were mainly reports of the on-going fighting, yet there were secret reports, which spoke of the vast mineral wealth which Afghanistan possesses. There were further reports, which reported questioningly the Americans taking planeloads of soil from various regions of Afghanistan to get them analysed in their country. Yet, few believed those reports.   But now new findings are emerging which say that those reports might be true to a certain extent. Afghanistan, which is one of the world’s poorest countries at present, contains huge riches in the shape of mineral deposits of gold, precious stones, coal, oil and gas, lithium, and rare-earth minerals.    Afghanistan’s mineral wealth A decade back some US geologists had calculated the mine...

The clouds darken for India The results of the assembly elections in four states of India have made the majorities more concerned and pessimistic about their future. Asad Mirza @AsadMirzaND   The ruling national party of India – the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) seems to have decapitated all opposition political parties in the country. The results of five states in India, which went to polls last month, the BJP has won in four states. Of these four states, the most important state was Uttar Pradesh (UP), as BJP’s performance in this state was being seen as a precursor to the coming national elections in 2024 and to gauge voter’s mood.   As per the Election Commission of India’s statistics, the BJP garnered 42% vote share in Uttar Pradesh, followed by Samajwadi party (SP) with 32.06%, Bahujan Samaj Party (BS) with 12.88% and the Indian National Congress with just 2.33%.    Also for the first time in UP, a ruling party has returned to power in the state after 1985. Yogi...