India links: China-India ties, Act East, Modi doctrine, Rajasthan, health and more

• Ananth Krishnan looks at the year ahead and identifies five factors that will make or break China-India ties.
• Can India become more like Singapore in terms of ease of doing business?
• Beijing is becoming an important external power in the South Asian subcontinent.
• How can Australian support for India's Act East strategy deepen bilateral ties? My take in Pragati.
• Robert Farley has penned a useful primer on India's nuclear weapons program.
• In Rajasthan, citizens with less than eight years of formal education will be banned from running in state elections. How this will disenfranchise women and the poor.
• How fractured centre-state relations in India impacts health spending.
• On Modi’s foreign policy, Hrishabh Sandilya argues:

While pragmatism has been key in Modi’s foreign policy, it is moot to conclude that there exists a clear Modi doctrine. The contours of one, though, have begun to emerge: A clear tilt toward the US and its allies, complemented by an “Act East” policy, as India chooses a multi-vectored approach to address the growing closeness between Russia and China.

Danielle Rajendram