STRATEGIC SPOTLIGHT

Awakening India

Shashi Tharoor

Are India and China doomed to Great Power rivalry? Is the “moral” foreign policy of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru obsolete? Will Bollywood equal Hollywood as a source of “soft” power? Is India now a de facto ally of the United States and Japan? Will democracy help or hinder India’s long-term growth?

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India’s Anti-Corruption Contest

Shashi Tharoor Series: Awakening India

2012-01-03

India ended 2011 amid political chaos, as the much-awaited “Lokpal Bill,” aimed at creating a strong, independent anti-corruption agency, collapsed amid a welter of recrimination in the parliament’s upper house. The episode, which leaves the bill in suspended animation, raises fundamental issues for Indian politics which will need to be addressed in the New Year.... read

Comments: 4 Recommended: 0 Read: 8484

Burmese Days

Shashi Tharoor Series: Awakening India

2011-12-08

After Burma's generals suppressed a popular uprising in 1988, overturned the opposition's overwhelming electoral victory, and arrested its leaders, India’s government initially backed the country's democrats, only to succumb to Realpolitik in later years. With Burma now opening up, has that amoral foreign-policy choice been vindicated?... read

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New India, Old Europe

Shashi Tharoor Series: Awakening India

2011-11-15

Although India has several affinities with the EU, this has not translated into close political or strategic relations. The case for India-EU cooperation could not be stronger, but the danger remains that India could write off Europe as a charming but irrelevant continent.... read

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India’s Nuclear Path

Shashi Tharoor Series: Awakening India

2011-10-10

Relations between India and Australia have been strained by the Australian government's refusal to sell uranium to energy-starved India for its civilian nuclear program, owing to India's failure to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. But India was right to reject the NPT.... read

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Democracy’s Saintly Challenger

Shashi Tharoor Series: Awakening India

2011-09-06

India is no stranger to mass mobilization for a popular cause. But the recent fast by the Gandhian leader Anna Hazare, culminating in an extraordinary parliamentary session that acceded to his main demands, marked a dramatic political departure – and raises important questions about civil society’s role in a democracy.... read

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India’s Functioning Anarchy

Shashi Tharoor Series: Awakening India

2011-08-09

John Kenneth Galbraith, who at one time was US Ambassador to India, described the country as a “functioning anarchy.” To understand his point, look no further than India's parliament today.... read

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Is Afghanistan Ready?

Shashi Tharoor Series: Awakening India

2011-07-12

Barack Obama’s announcement of the start of US troop withdrawals from Afghanistan, and his administration’s increasing emphasis on reconciliation with the Taliban, has been studied attentively in one capital that has a large stake in the outcome – New Delhi. India has no troops in Afghanistan, but it cannot afford failure there.... read

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India Gives

Shashi Tharoor Series: Awakening India

2011-06-10

For decades after independence, India was seen as an impoverished land of destitute people, desperately in need of international handouts. But India has now emerged as a significant donor to developing countries in Africa and Asia, second only to China among countries of the global South.... read

Comments: 8 Recommended: 1 Read: 11756

Alliances of the Air

Shashi Tharoor Series: Awakening India

2011-05-03

India’s recent decision not to purchase US warplanes for its $10 billion-plus fighter aircraft program – the largest single military tender in the country’s history – has stirred debate in defense circles worldwide. But the notion that a major arms purchase should be based on strategic considerations rather than on technical grounds, strikes Indian officials as unfair.... read

Comments: 2 Recommended: 1 Read: 14357

Wickets and Wariness	Shashi Tharoor
India-Pakistan relations – a challenge at the best of times, and in the doldrums since the terrorist attacks on Mumbai in November 2008 – received an unexpected boost last month from an unlikely source: cricket. Though the thaw has involved no substantive policy decisions, dialogue might be its own reward.... read

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Slumdog Oscar

Shashi Tharoor Series: Awakening India

2009-02-13

Danny Boyle's film "Slumdog Millionaire" has generated protest in India over its title, its depiction of the country's poverty, and its portrayal of Indians as conniving, unprincipled, and ruthless. But, for precisely the same reasons, the film has generated considerably more admiration among Indians.... read

Comments: 0 Recommended: 0 Read: 25716

India’s Olympic Also-Rans

Shashi Tharoor Series: Awakening India

2008-08-01

China’s dedicated Olympic athletes are widely assumed to have dozens of gold and silver medals in their grasp. Whether or not they overtake the US in the final tally, however, one thing is certain: China’s neighbor and regional geopolitical rival, India, will be lucky to win even a single medal, extending a long and sorry history of athletic failure.... read

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Eyeball to Eyeball at the Top of the World

Shashi Tharoor Series: Awakening India

2008-07-14

The last six months have witnessed a proliferation of incidents along the disputed Sino-Indian frontier. While fears of imminent major hostilities are clearly overblown, as China, with the Olympics looming, is unlikely to initiate a clash, Chinese officials have taken pains to assert China's claim to 92,000 square miles of Indian territory.... read

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Can the Elephant Dance with the Dragon?

Shashi Tharoor Series: Awakening India

2008-05-16

It is fashionable these days, particularly in the West, to speak of India and China in the same breath. In fact, their differences far outweigh their similarities, although both countries clearly share a strong interest in close cooperation.... read

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India at Play

Shashi Tharoor Series: Awakening India

2008-06-13

Cricket, once the sport of the British upper classes, is in India a great leveler. Everything about the game seems ideally suited to the Indian national character: its rich complexity, the endless possibilities and variations that can occur with each delivery, the dozen different ways of getting out – all are reminiscent of a society of infinite forms and varieties.... read

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India at the UN High Table

Shashi Tharoor Series: Awakening India

2011-01-12

This is an unusual year for the UN Security Council: several powerful states, whose growing global clout has made them aspirants to permanent seats, will be serving two-year terms. For India, the role is both an opportunity and a challenge.... read

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The Indian Exception

Shashi Tharoor Series: Awakening India

2008-10-06

The ratification by the United States Congress of the historic India-US Nuclear Agreement marks a remarkable new development in world affairs. Indeed, as America struggles with financial crisis and quagmires in the Middle East and Central Asia, sealing this agreement may be one of the beleaguered Bush administration’s enduring foreign policy accomplishments.... read

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The Terror Next Door

Shashi Tharoor Series: Awakening India

2008-12-03

NEW DELHI – The fallout from the terror attacks in Mumbai last week has already shaken India. Deep and sustained anger across the country – at its demonstrated vulnerability to terror and at the multiple institutional failures that allowed such loss of life – has prompted the resignations of the Home Minister in the national government and the Chief Minister and his Deputy in the state of Maharashtra, of which Mumbai is the capital. As evidence mounts that the attacks were planned and directed from Pakistani territory, calls for decisive action have intensified. But what can India do? ... read

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Musharraf’s Ambiguous Legacy

Shashi Tharoor Series: Awakening India

2008-08-19

Pakistan is again in the grip of chaos, with its border areas in Islamist hands and its powerful intelligence apparatus - the creator and patron of the Taliban - out of the control of the elected civilian government. By the time President Pervez Musharraf resigned, he had already lost the ability to do anything about it.... read

Comments: 1 Recommended: 0 Read: 25794

Slumdog Oscar	Shashi Tharoor
Danny Boyle's film "Slumdog Millionaire" has generated protest in India over its title, its depiction of the country's poverty, and its portrayal of Indians as conniving, unprincipled, and ruthless. But, for precisely the same reasons, the film has generated considerably more admiration among Indians.... read
India’s Israel Envy	Shashi Tharoor
As Israeli planes and tanks exact a heavy toll on Gaza, India’s leaders and strategic thinkers have been watching with an unusual degree of interest – and some empathy. When Indians watch Israel take the fight to the enemy, some cannot resist wishing that they could do something similar in Pakistan. ... read

AUTHOR INFO

Shashi Tharoor

Shashi Tharoor, a former Indian Minister of State for External Affairs and UN Under-Secretary General, is a member of India’s parliament and the author of a dozen books, including India from Midnight to the Millennium and Nehru: the Invention of India.

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