India

With its mammoth general elections due in April or May, Indian politics is entering full-bodied election mode. India’s 900 million voters are set to decide whether to return Prime Minister Narendra Modi to office, or not, in elections that some are describing as the most important since

When former prime minister of Norway Kjell Mangne Bondevik met with separatist Kashmiri leaders Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Mirwaiz Umar Farooq in Indian Kashmir last month, a barrage of questions followed.   Fruitful meeting of JRL with Mr Kjell Magne Bondevik,Ex Prime Minister

It is January; a month that, in north India, once fell in the season of winter, but now is more synonymous with the depths of the region’s dreaded pollution season. This month, as in recent years, a brutal combination of diverse factors has continued to coalesce to produce dire air quality in its

The Indian city Ayodhya recently once again turned into a saffron fortress. The BJP seems set to fight the 2019 elections by rallying its factions and allies to assert the Hindutva agenda and further politicising Hindu-Muslim relations. More than 50,000 supporters of the Hindu Right,

The recent decision by the government of Pakistan and India to build a corridor from Indian Punjab to Kartarpur in Pakistan has raised hopes for the revival of a dialogue between the countries. The Kartarpur corridor will be built over a 4km stretch and will enable Sikh pilgrims from India to

You don’t hear much about India’s Andaman and Nicobar Islands aside from tourism or tribes. The islands, which make up one of India’s seven union territories, are a remote archipelago in the Bay of Bengal, about halfway between Thailand and India. They have traditionally been highly protected

India and Japan have forged a special strategic and global partnership over the years, and Prime Ministers Narendra Modi and Shinzo Abe have developed a personal and special relationship, propelling the relationship between the two nations to greater heights. Last month, Abe invited Modi to his

An awkward scene unfolded earlier this month in Lonavala, a hill town in the west of India. A group of men claiming to represent a regional political party, Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS), entered a house where a reality television game show called “Bigg Boss” is filmed. They handed over a

In the last few decades, state-making projects have transformed life in the Himalaya. Infrastructure development intended for troop deployment along disputed borders has, more recently, enabled large-scale transport and extraction projects and a tourist rush in this globally influential region

Long considered the crowning jewel of the fleet, India has continuously operated an aircraft carrier for well over half-a-century. Since 1961, when its first carrier entered service, India has gone to war with Portugal (1961), China (1962), and Pakistan (1965, 1971, and 1999). How is it then, that

It has been dubbed the world’s biggest experiment in universal health care. Last Sunday, India launched its A$2.2 billion universal health care plan that was promised in the budget earlier this year. It gives 100 million of its poorest people access to free health care to treat serious ailments

Last month, the Indian Navy conducted the largest ever disaster relief and rescue operation under its Southern Naval Command, part of an effort to rescue thousands of people affected by the devastating floods that ravaged the coastal state of Kerala. Known as Operation Madad, the navy led a

After talks had been delayed previously owing to domestic developments in the US, causing much disappointment in India, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Secretary of Defense James Mattis finally arrived in New Delhi last week for meetings with their counterparts in India – Foreign

A statue to honour Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, the Indian king crowned in 1674 and founder of the Maratha Empire, was first suggested in 2004. The driver then was a coalition of Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party, but it wasn’t until the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government

On 17 July, the Supreme Court of India was moved to condemn the recent spate of lynchings across the country as “horrendous acts of mobocracy … which cannot be allowed to become ‘the new normal’”. The justices had gone straight to the heart of the matter. The loss of so many innocent lives

India is ranked a “major power” in the Lowy Institute’s new Asia Power Index. The Index sifts through more than 100 indicators across eight different measures to create a unique ranking of the relative power of 25 Asian countries. And for New Delhi, the analysis by and large looks

Few people are as qualified as Peter Varghese to draw up a timely, sound, and realistic blueprint to build a dynamic yet sustainable economic partnership between India and Australia. Unlike the case with China, an expanded trade and investment relationship with India will enhance Australia’s

Peter Varghese’s independent report on Australia’s economic strategy for India, released by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull last week, sounds a confident note for the future of the relationship. Although the focus of the report is trade, geopolitical alignments are one of three

In one of India’s crowded government hospitals, Thankappan*, a middle-aged man, lies in a vegetative state. His entire body seems frail, and his lips are discoloured. Thankappan’s wife and two daughters are watching over the family’s sole earner in the hospital. Anti-smoking

On 20 May, India’s government notified the World Health Organisation of a confirmed outbreak of Nipah virus in Kozhikode, a district in Kerala, after test samples examined by the National Institute of Virology in Pune. By the end of the month, 19 cases of the disease had

Former Australian prime minister Paul Keating once recounted describing to an American admiral the sound a US aircraft carrier would make in a major fight: “Glug, glug, glug”.  Keating’s words reflect the scepticism of many analysts about the vulnerability and cost of

Sometimes what politicians don’t say is as important as what they do say. So it was with Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi’s keenly anticipated keynote at the Shangri-La Dialogue this year. The speech could have been fiery, as Modi’s rhetoric often is in front of a domestic audience. But

The “informal summit” in Wuhan, China, between India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and China’s President Xi Jinping last month generated a wave of commentary in India, China, and further afield. The Chinese media played it up, heralding a major breakthrough in

Two famous Tamil actors are aiming to use their fan clubs as the basis for new political parties.  “First, we must integrate the registered and unregistered fans associations and bring them under one umbrella,” declared Tamil film star Rajinikanth at the launch of his new political party