Yesterday I mentioned that India had successfully test-launched an undersea missile. Today the head of Pakistan’s navy declared that the test would trigger a regional arms-race. (There are some doubts as to whether China has already mastered the technology.): “We are aware of these developments, and these developments are taking place with a view to put nuclear weapons at sea and it is a very, very serious issue,” the state news agency quoted him as saying. Of course, having tested three nuclear capable missiles in the past year, Pakistan is hardly in the position of pointing the finger.
Via Secret Défense comes the news that India’s defense ministry today announced the successful test-firing of an undersea missile, adding India to a very exclusive list of countries that have mastered the challenging technology. That the news coincides with Parag Khanna’s WPR article on the challenges facing India’s emergence as a modern economy strikes me as a poignant reminder of where so much of the wealth of the “second world” that could go into raising living standards and developing infrastructure will eventually be diverted. The launch is the latest in a tit for tat sequence of test firings between India [...]
On the Uttar Pradesh-Bihar frontier, the chungi system is alive and well. One of the most unnecessary legacies of British colonialism, no less than five kilometers of trucks — those colorfully decorated and melodically horned belching beasts, overloaded with everything from steel beams to sacks of flour — sit idle, waiting to show their permits, sales tax chits, and other sheaves of documents to corrupt officers. My mother and I are on a nostalgic road trip from Delhi to Calcutta, driving on both emperor Akbar’s famed Grand Trunk road and its newest incarnation, the much touted “Quadrangle” project of major [...]
