A press conference, intended to address media’s concerns over corruption and scams in the government, backfired after the opposition seized on statements made by the Prime Minister in the interaction. Opposition, including both the left and the BJP, attacked the three defenses put up by the PM when asked about scams. First, the PM Manmohan […]
A strong mandate in favor of either the Congress or the BJP would not by itself be a ‘game changer’ for India’s economy, even as surveys indicate that support for the Bharatiya Janata Party is gaining momentum, Moody’s Investor Service said. The firm, part of the global rating agency Moody’s, said the impact of external […]
Bringing the promise of relief to millions of suffering telecom subscribers, the Department of Telecom today clarified that private companies do not enjoy any immunity from prosecution at district consumer forums as has been argued by them so far. The Department of Telecom today said that private companies do not qualify under the definition of […]
The National Spot Exchange Ltd, caught up in allegations of rigging at its cash commodities exchange, alleged that the auditor Chokshi & Chokshi, appointed by the regulator, overstepped its terms of reference while drawing up its final report. NSEL said it was yet to get a final copy of the report, which has hit media headlines […]
The United States reassured India that its plan to withdraw its military forces from Afghanistan by 2014 did not mean it was totally abandoning the war-torn country. In a meeting between the US Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee chairman John Kerry and the Indian foreign secretary Nirupama Rao, the former reassured the latter that withdrawal will […]
India was sorely disappointed by the Government of Pakistan’s failure to take “visible” steps against the Lashkar e Toiba militants accused in the Mumbai terror attacks, but the US consoled it by pointing out that the Pakistani civilian government was powerless before its own army. According to a US diplomatic cable written in February last […]
Home Minister P Chidambaram came out strongly in support of the Omar Abdullah government’s decision to ‘deport’ BJP senior leaders from Kashmir. The BJP leaders, Arun Jaitley and others, were physically ‘moved’ by the Jammu and Kashmir government yesterday night to Madhopur in Punjab and put up at a rest house. The BJP leaders were […]
Pakistan felt it was unfair to give India a higher status than itself at Climate Change negotiations despite having less to lose from it, according to US Ambassador to Pakistan Anne Patterson. Writing from Islamabad shortly after the Copenhagen round of Climate Change negotiations petered out, Patterson noted that the mood in Islamabad was particularly […]
Suspicion about “Love Jihad” — an alleged Islamist plot to increase the share of Muslims in the population by incentivizing Muslim men to marry outside the community — is probably the result of the overall paranoia and religious tension in South India, US Consul General Andrew Simkin told his government in February last year. However, […]
Muslims in China’s Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) are increasingly becoming more aware of their Isamic heritage, thanks to more liberal policies followed by the Chinese government in the last three decades, according to an on-the-ground report from David Brown, the Consul General of Chengdu in Sichuan, a province adjoining the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR). However, […]
The hard-line Deobandi school of Islam has the support of only around 20% of India’s 16-18 crore Muslims and most Indian Muslims prefer Sufi flavored versions, Timothy Roemer, the then Ambassador to India, told Farah Pandit before her first visit to India as Obama’s Administration’s ‘Special Representative to Muslim Communities.’ In a thorough analysis of […]
US officials worried that the Union Government’s move to absorb private universities into the Government system and force its own curriculum on them is likely to dent India’s ability to churn out graduates whose training is in line with the needs of modern industries like IT, according to a 2010 cable leaked by Wikileaks. Education […]
US politician and Obama’s first ambassador Timothy Roemer, a keen observer of demographic trends, rather dramatically describes the changes taking place in the Indian state of Punjab due to immigration from Eastern India and Bangladesh. Based on his interaction with social and political leaders from the state, Roemer also noted that the Islamic religion — […]
Home Minister P Chidambaram’s assent to the formation of a Telangana state in December 2009 showed the Congress party as “weak and feeble.. easily bullied and intimidated by threats,” the then US ambassador to India, Timothy Roemer wrote to Washington on the next day. The Congress Party came was being portrayed as “weak and spineless, […]
While it has always been known that talks between Chinese and US officials are not always cordial, the stormy nature of some of these meetings is revealed in cable written by US embassy in Beijing in October 2007. The cable described the unusually aggressive and blunt feedback from the then Chinese foreign minister Yang Jiechi […]
In this age of super-charged discussions and rallies against corruption, it is perhaps instructive to look back five years when scams were not the stuff of daily news. Hearing the innovative ways in which people rationalized corruption, the then US Consul for Chennai David Hopper wondered if Indians really objected to it at a deep […]
The Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) tried to prevent the emergence of Nepal as a republic in 2008 as it wanted to retain it as the World’s last ‘Hindu Kingdom’, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) felt. Krishna Mahara, a member of the Maoist Central Committee of Nepal expressed the fear in a letter written to […]
Is the famed ‘Kerala Model’ of development — characterized by high government spending on health and education — unsustainable in the long run? Even the state’s then ruling Communists were not sure it was, according to a detailed report of a visit by US officials to the South Indian state in late 2007. The visit […]
The coming to power of Mayawati, India’s most powerful Dalit leader, in Uttar Pradesh has instilled fear in the minds of criminals and improved law and order, the US embassy to India felt after a review at the end of 100 days of her rule in UP in 2007. While she may not be “up […]
Singapore consciously cultivates its relationship with India as a way to counter-balance China’s growing influence in South East Asia, according to a cable written by American ambassador to the city-state, Franklin Lavin in 2004. According to Lavin’s reading of the country’s new “India fever”, Singapore does not want China to dominate South East Asia and […]
