India Archive

In a long anticipated move, late last month Cambodia’s Senate passed a controversial law that critics claim severely endangers the autonomy of foreign and local nongovernmental organizations in the country. The pushback from civil society and foreign governments has been strong, but hopes that it might be recalled were extinguished when Cambodian King Norodom Sihamoni signed the draft legislation officially into law earlier this month. But the law is merely the latest in an alarming spate of efforts by authoritarian and nationalist governments to reduce the reach of NGOs working across Asia. In China, two proposed draft laws that would […]

Last month, India and Thailand signed a series of agreements, including a tax avoidance deal and extradition treaty. In an email interview, Pongphisoot Busbarat, a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University’s Weatherhead East Asia Institute, discussed India-Thailand relations. WPR: How extensive are Thailand’s economic ties with India, and what are the main areas of cooperation? Pongphisoot Busbarat: Thailand’s economic ties with India are multilayered, based on bilateral, subregional and regional schemes. These arrangements were made possible by the complementarity of both countries’ foreign policy strategies since the early 1990s: India’s “Look East” policy and Thailand’s “Look West” policy. The Joint Commission […]

Last month, after years of hedging on the issue, India agreed to include Japan as a permanent participant in its annual Malabar naval exercises with the United States, set this year for October. Japan has participated in the Malabar exercises before, but only as an invited observer. The decision to expand the Malabar exercises is a significant turning point not just for India’s role in the region, but also for the development of the trilateral relationship among the U.S., Japan and India. This long-underperforming trilateral partnership brings together the U.S. and the two largest and most influential democracies in the […]

There has been no shortage of buzz about Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s activist foreign policy since he took office in May 2014. He has visited a number of countries in India’s immediate neighborhood, expanding India’s “Look East” policy by looking north to Central Asia. He has boosted ties in Europe, traveling to France, Germany and Russia; and the Middle East, hosting Gulf leaders in New Delhi; in addition to visits for bilateral meetings and multilateral summits from Australia and Japan to Brazil and the United States. All in all, he has brought renewed vigor to India’s foreign policy concerns […]