US experience of negotiating with the Afghan Taliban before 9-11 amply demonstrates the futility of such negotiations now.
Michael Rubin, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and formerly an intern at the US Embassy in Tajikistan in 1997, deconstructs the pre-9/11 negotiations between the US and the Afghan Taliban from the declassified State Department [...]
The Women’s Reservation Bill has been hotly debated and divisive since 1996, and it was finally cleared by the Rajya Sabha amid much drama in the Upper House and the national media.
Reservations are never desirable. The Bill will not really solve any of the problems that its most vocal proponents claim it to be a [...]
K Subrahmanyam
There are clear indications of Pakistan projecting a radical change in respect of its policies towards the five Jehadi entities listed in President Obama’s Pak-Af strategy, in his West Point speech on 1st December, 2009. Al Qaeda, Afghan Taliban, Pakistani Taliban, Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) and the Haqqani network had all been cited as the extremist [...]
In my post at Wall Street Journal’s India Chief Mentor blog, I write:
I don’t think we should be content with a GDP growth rate of 7% or 9%. Our true potential is at 12%-plus, for two reasons – India’s GDP stands at about $1.2 trillion and we are starting from a low base. Secondly, India’s [...]
Writing in this month’s MIT Technology Review, I called for wholesale liberalization in higher-education to build India’s competitiveness in nanotechnology:
World-class research conducted by higher-education institutions and national laboratories is a key ingredient to catalyze businesses built around nanotechnology and cultivating a culture of academic freedom and flexibility of the kind enjoyed by Ramakrishanan when switching [...]
Mr. Vijay Kelkar, Chairman of the Finance Commission delivered the 26th Sir Purshotamdas Thakurdas Memorial Lecture at Mumbai on 29th January. An extract from his talk titled On Strategies for Disinvestment and Privatisation:
19. A useful way to visualise this is essentially as a balance sheet adjustment. Suppose the government undertakes a portfolio adjustment, where Rs.10,000 [...]
There are only a few days left for the people to decide their choice. To say it is will be a close race is probably an understatement; if we go by the virulent passions the election has unexpectedly generated it has all the makings of a bloody fight.
Rear Admiral Raja Menon (Retd)
The majority of comments in India on the prime minister’s visit to the USA have concluded that nothing much was achieved, at least going by the joint communiqués issued. These statements don’t always give any idea of the subjects that may have been brought up and were left unresolved, either because [...]
K Subrahmanyam
Track-2 conferences and newspaper campaigns in India are urging that Delhi should resume its composite dialogue with Pakistan. Most of the Pakistani leaders make the point that India’s refusal to resume the dialogue strengthens the hands of the terrorists and resumption of dialogue will help to consolidate the democratic government in Pakistan. While this [...]
Keerthik Sasidharan
On January 6, 2010—a small and unnoticed ceremony in Chennai brought together many luminaries of Carnatic music. It was the birth centenary of G N Balasubramaniam (GNB)—the radical aesthete who thrived and bestrode the Indian soundscape, particularly south of the Vindhyas, in the middle part of the previous century along with Bade Ghulam Ali [...]
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