BANGKOK, Thailand – Ethnic clashes that have led to 11 deaths in Moreh, an Indian town on the border with Burma, have barely raised a blip on the global news meter but have brought much trade between the two countries to a standstill. Moreh is a fly-blown place in a remote corner of India’s troubled and underdeveloped northeast region and remains largely under lock and key guard by units of the Assam Rifles regiment. And yet Moreh is regarded by the central government in faraway New Delhi as the gateway to Southeast Asia in its “Look East” economic growth policy. [...]
Nicholas Burns, the U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, hastily ended a brief visit to India last weekend after failing to reach an agreement with Indian Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon on the long-anticipated U.S.-India nuclear deal. Both countries, however, appear hopeful that the issue is going to get a renewed push from the highest political level this week when Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and U.S. President George W. Bush meet on the sidelines of the Group of 8 summit in Heiligendamm, Germany. The way the proposed deal is laid out now, the United States would ship nuclear fuel [...]
Elections in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, loom large on the country’s political calendar. Indeed, with a population of 170 million, Uttar Pradesh would, if it were its own country, be the fifth most populous in the world, and it also sends the most members to India’s federal parliament. The importance of the state’s assembly elections, which start April 7 and are to be completed in early May, are therefore clear. Yet despite the seemingly endless amount of ink spilt on the rising India, and despite near double-digit economic growth for the last two years, the country’s ruling Congress [...]
