India Archive

When five diplomats from the United Arab Emirates were killed in a bombing in Kandahar earlier this month, Afghan authorities quickly blamed the Haqqani network, which many suspect of having ties to Pakistani intelligence. That triggered speculation that the attack—the first on diplomats from a Gulf state in Afghanistan—was meant to send a message to the UAE about its growing counterterrorism cooperation with India. The timing of the blast was seen as especially significant since it came just weeks before Abu Dhabi’s powerful crown prince, Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, who is also the deputy supreme commander of the […]

Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on income inequality and poverty reduction in various countries around the world. A recent study by Oxfam found that inequality is on the rise in India, and that the richest 1 percent of Indians control 58 percent of the country’s total wealth. In an email interview, Vamsi Vakulabharanam, an associate professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, discusses income inequality and poverty reduction in India. WPR: What is the rate of income inequality in India, what are the latest trends in terms of widening or lessening inequality, and what […]

On the last day of 2016, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi went on television with a New Year’s speech to address the most pressing issue on Indians’ mind: the sudden withdrawal less than two months earlier of most paper currency from circulation. He urged the Indian people to be patient and have faith, and told them to think of Mahatma Gandhi and his strategy of nonviolent resistance as they tried to endure the harsh challenge they now face. Gandhi had called on Indians to resist British colonial forces. In the case of India’s cash crisis, the tribulations were inflicted by […]