Between shame and shamelessness
We have tumbled into and been tossed from one species of government to another. We have suffered a ‘brutal’ dictatorship and savored an ‘enlightened’ one. Tired of a ‘sham’ democracy…
The past is the future?
So, how is the 2013 election really to be decided? Are the patterns of the past to be followed based on old loyalties, feudal influence and the hold of the…
Agenda for the nation: 2013 and beyond – I
The next government, which is expected to be in power sometime this year, shall have to formulate a national agenda for the next five years in the context of global,…
Reality and rhetoric
“A Sophisticated rhetorician inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity.” Disraeli’s famous description of his opponent Gladstone, on July 27, 1878, has been justly applied to leaders who imagine…
Lessons from Cyprus
A few years down memory lane, who would’ve thought that Cyprus – the Russian tax haven and the hub of a massive banking bubble – would bear such a mammoth…
UPA on shaky ground
When Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress, the second largest component of India’s ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA), walked out of the alliance last September, nobody thought that would immediately destabilise the…
Is this the problem?
In an article titled ‘Is Pakistan’s condition terminal?’ published in Foreign Policy, Robert Hathaway, director of the Asian Programme at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars in Washington, has…
The tribal mind
The Pakhtun tribes on both sides of the border are caught in the eye of the storm. In the present circumstances, it is important to know what Pakhtun tribes think…
The Zardari legacy
For the past four decades the PPP has thrived on the enduring Bhutto legacy. But it is the Zardari legacy on which the party is likely to be judged in…
Bangladesh & 1971 syndrome
Bangladesh is again plunging itself into another phase of political turmoil and violence. The decision by the Dhaka-based International Criminal Tribunal (ICT) to award capital punishment to two key leaders…
