India’s parliament loses its sense of humour
India’s government and the presiding Nehru-Gandhi dynasty have a problem – not the policy vacuum, sliding economy, weak leadership and bullying by coalition partners that are only too well known, but a new one that has been entirely of its own making in the past week.
By John Elliott from Riding the Elephant blog | The Foreign Desk - International dispatches from Independent correspondents - | Wednesday, 16 May 2012 at 2:01 pm
Hilary Clinton clashes with Indian government trouble-maker
Hilary Clinton has just had first-hand experience of the problems that the Indian government regularly faces with its unpredictably irascible – and it now appears maybe untruthful – coalition partner, Mamata Banerjee.
By John Elliott from Riding the Elephant blog | The Foreign Desk - International dispatches from Independent correspondents - | Tuesday, 8 May 2012 at 12:30 pm
India’s slide leads to an international down-grade
It had to happen. India’s slide in the past two or three years from a self-perceived emerging economic super-power to its current crisis of appalling government performance, sliding economic statistics, and almost daily political crises has today led to a damning international verdict with ratings agency Standard & Poor’s deciding [...]
By John Elliott from Riding the Elephant blog | The Foreign Desk - International dispatches from Independent correspondents - | Wednesday, 25 April 2012 at 4:43 pm
Manmohan Singh’s friends warn him your ‘legacy is at risk’
Two events in the past few days underline the decline both in the popularity of the Congress Party that leads India’s coalition government and the success of prime minister Manmohan Singh as an economic reformer. People ranging from the voters of New Delhi to loyal economists and other policy allies have in effect warned that, [...]
By John Elliott from Riding the Elephant blog | The Foreign Desk - International dispatches from Independent correspondents - | Thursday, 19 April 2012 at 2:43 pm
Unexpected troop movements near Delhi in January cause alarm
Army intrigue and graft hits India’s defences
Concern about worsening relations between India’s army and government is graphically illustrated by a story that takes up the entire front page of The The Indian Express this morning about two key mechanised military units moving unexpectedly towards Delhi at night in mid-January. The government did not have the usual [...]
By John Elliott from Riding the Elephant blog | The Foreign Desk - International dispatches from Independent correspondents - | Wednesday, 4 April 2012 at 9:01 am
UK hedge fund challenges India public sector controls
MUMBAI: India’s coal problems are getting worse and are in the news for all the wrong reasons. The industry has been failing the country for years by not maximising the output of efficiently mined coal. As a result, power supplies have been crippled because of coal shortages, and the government has failed to act.
Now the [...]
By John Elliott from Riding the Elephant blog | Notebook - A selection of Independent views -, Opinion, The Foreign Desk - International dispatches from Independent correspondents - | Tuesday, 27 March 2012 at 7:20 pm
Salman Rushdie rubbishes ‘dim’ Imran Khan and much else besides
It’s been quite a weekend in New Delhi. India’s finance minister Pranab Mukherjee presented a desperately ineffectual and unimaginative Budget on Friday, and then failed to turn up at India Today magazine’s annual conclave yesterday (Saturday) morning, where he was billed to be the first speaker.
He withdrew not because he was too busy or had [...]
By John Elliott from Riding the Elephant blog | The Foreign Desk - International dispatches from Independent correspondents - | Sunday, 18 March 2012 at 7:41 pm
Rahul Gandhi and Congress do badly in India’s state elections
As India waited this morning for results of five state assembly elections, the most telling headlines in the day’s newspapers, along with Rahul Gandhi’s failure to galvanise votes in Uttar Pradesh (UP), were on share movements yesterday of leading companies – Jaiprakash (JP) group companies went down while Anil Ambani’s Reliance (ADAG) stocks went up, [...]
By John Elliott from Riding the Elephant blog | The Foreign Desk - International dispatches from Independent correspondents - | Tuesday, 6 March 2012 at 10:46 am
India’s Maoist rebels need mainstream party politics
India’s Naxalite rebels need to be tackled with mainstream political activity, not just development projects and repression by security forces. This new approach for handling the country’s most serious internal security problem is being pushed by Jairam Ramesh, the minister for rural development. It is also being tacitly accepted by the state government of Orissa [...]
By John Elliott from Riding the Elephant blog | The Foreign Desk - International dispatches from Independent correspondents - | Thursday, 1 March 2012 at 7:26 pm
What’s amiss in India – is it jugaad?
For decades India has survived, and sometimes thrived, by turning muddle and adversity into success. In the days of the licence Raj, this enabled the country to work, creakily, until systems and machinery broke down and were patched up again. Hindustan Motors’ Ambassador car is perhaps the longest surviving example of patchwork success, with its [...]
By John Elliott from Riding the Elephant blog | The Foreign Desk - International dispatches from Independent correspondents - | Tuesday, 14 February 2012 at 2:18 pm
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