https://www.scmp.com/rss/15913/feed Formerly with the South China Morning Post, Debasish is an award-winning journalist and co-author of 'To Kill A Democracy: India's Passage To Despotism' (OUP, 2021). en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com Debasish Roy Chowdhury Debasish Roy Chowdhury China and India are having a bit of a moment. Five years after a fatal confrontation on their unresolved border pushed relations over the edge, the two sides are rushing towards a detente. They are restoring peace along the border, reversing trade and investment curbs, easing visa restrictions to promote business and tourism, resuming direct flights and orchestrating a flurry of high-level official visits to formalise the thaw. This weekend, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is visiting China... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3323704/china-and-india-love-time-cholera?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3323704/china-and-india-love-time-cholera?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 30 Aug 2025 06:30:08 +0000 A US military plane carrying Indian illegal immigrants landed in the northern Indian city of Amritsar on Wednesday, handcuffed and legs chained throughout the journey. Unlike Colombia, which last month initially refused to accept deportees dispatched in military planes like criminals, India chose discretion as the better part of valour. It was not a particularly proud moment for a major US ally and rising power whose leader is supposedly a close friend of the new US president, but India is doing... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3297836/chindia-returns-india-and-china-prepare-trump-earthquake?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3297836/chindia-returns-india-and-china-prepare-trump-earthquake?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 08 Feb 2025 00:00:09 +0000 Experience teaches us that well-organised despots, unless stopped in their tracks by citizen resistance, robust watchdog institutions, unforeseen outcomes and plain bad luck, can quickly remould sickly democratic institutions into a different political order we call despotism. Despotism isn’t old-fashioned tyranny or military dictatorship, or a single-ruler horror show the ancients called autocracy. It mustn’t be confused with 20th-century fascism or totalitarianism. Despotism is rather a new... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3144069/indias-passage-despotism-began-long-demagogue-modi?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3144069/indias-passage-despotism-began-long-demagogue-modi?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 07 Aug 2021 06:00:23 +0000 It’s hard to imagine today, but there was a time not so long ago in Hong Kong when the biggest political story in town was unsanctioned home improvement. In early 2012, a bureaucrat who aspired to be the city’s chief executive was caught hiding a fancy basement under his swimming pool, complete with an entertainment suite, a jacuzzi and a wine cellar. A media frenzy erupted. Eagle-eyed reporters kept vigil outside his home, their cameras mounted on cranes watching his home 24/7, and political... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3144143/battle-democracy-india-hong-kong-and-bidens-china-bogeyman?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3144143/battle-democracy-india-hong-kong-and-bidens-china-bogeyman?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 07 Aug 2021 02:00:14 +0000 Indian news channels had buzzed with anticipation since Wednesday morning. Within hours, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was to arrive at the ancient temple town of Ayodhya to lay the foundation stone for a grand temple to Hindu warrior-god Ram. Talking heads analysed the significance of the day. Reporters on the ground relayed the mood across the nation. News anchors provided constant updates on the prime minister’s journey from the capital New Delhi to Ayodhya. As the countdown began for his... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3096533/republic-ram-indias-modi-lays-foundation-hindu-state-grand?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3096533/republic-ram-indias-modi-lays-foundation-hindu-state-grand?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 08 Aug 2020 08:00:23 +0000 It was only last Saturday that India’s army chief sought to assure everyone that the “entire situation along our borders with China is under control”. As grisly details emerge on the bloody free-for-all in Ladakh, it is now amply clear that the “border” has been anything but. Not least because there is no “border” between China and India, which leads to the situation the two find themselves in today. From the reports we have so far, 20 Indian soldiers died at the hands of Chinese troops in the... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3089842/china-and-india-how-many-soldiers-must-die-they-get-border?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3089842/china-and-india-how-many-soldiers-must-die-they-get-border?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 20 Jun 2020 03:10:10 +0000 All governments like to make pious noises about the poor, democratically elected ones even more so. Even if they are run by elites with little genuine interest in the well-being of the unwashed, they at least put up a show of caring. It’s not just virtue-signalling, it’s survival. Which is what makes India’s handling of the coronavirus lockdown so baffling. The political leadership of the world’s biggest democracy these days doesn’t even pretend that it cares about the poor working class. Ever... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3084650/coronavirus-lockdown-if-india-treats-its-migrant-workers-dirt?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3084650/coronavirus-lockdown-if-india-treats-its-migrant-workers-dirt?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 17 May 2020 04:15:15 +0000 As sectarian violence engulfed parts of India’s capital last month, 60-year-old rag picker Ayub Ansari and his son went without food for three days. Trapped indoors by the violence, Ansari, who lived hand to mouth making barely US$4 a day selling the scrap he picked off garbage dumps, ran out of supplies and decided to chance it. His disabled son, 17-year-old Salman, warned him against going out. He left home early in the morning while Salman was still asleep. A couple of hours later, two men... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3074002/whats-killing-indias-democracy-its-not-just-modi-whos-blame?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3074002/whats-killing-indias-democracy-its-not-just-modi-whos-blame?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 07 Mar 2020 05:00:17 +0000 Tiananmen Lite visited Delhi on Sunday night and left a trail of blood at one of India’s most famous universities amid a growing student protest against moves by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government’s new citizenship initiatives. Unlike the crackdown in Beijing three decades ago, however, it came without tanks or assault rifles. Instead, the state crackdown on dissenting students in the Indian capital hid itself in the anonymity of masked strangers wielding sticks, rods... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3044911/blood-flows-delhis-jnu-campus-tiananmen-lite-meets-democracy-lite?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3044911/blood-flows-delhis-jnu-campus-tiananmen-lite-meets-democracy-lite?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 06 Jan 2020 15:00:34 +0000 One of the most iconic scenes ever to emerge from Bollywood is a confrontation between a mafia don and his younger brother, a police officer, in a 1975 film called Deewar (The Wall). The two are meeting after they parted ways when Ravi, the police officer, found out that his brother Vijay – whom Ravi thought was a successful businessman – was actually one of the top smugglers in town. They meet at the same place under an overbridge where they grew up as street children. Vijay wants Ravi to lay... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3044557/modi-thinks-he-xi-jinping-protests-show-india-not-china?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3044557/modi-thinks-he-xi-jinping-protests-show-india-not-china?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 04 Jan 2020 01:00:29 +0000 From Germany to Chile and South Africa, nations have had to endure painful reconciliation processes to heal themselves, put the past behind them and draw lessons from violent brushes with history to prevent their recurrence. India has chosen to beat a reverse path. Tired of the country’s stable democracy, preserved for seven decades after a blood-soaked independence, its muscular new caretakers are urgently poking old wounds in the hope of stirring up India’s demons to take it down the same road... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3042045/modis-surgical-strike-muslims-puts-india-war-itself?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3042045/modis-surgical-strike-muslims-puts-india-war-itself?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 14 Dec 2019 04:00:18 +0000 In the winter of 1962, panic gripped India’s northeastern state of Assam. A border war had broken out with China, and a victorious Chinese army was marching towards Assam as India’s defences crumbled. People began to flee amid reports that government offices were destroying documents and closing shop in fear of the coming Chinese invasion. Feeding the panic, a state-owned bank was found burning its stock of cash to prevent it from falling into Chinese hands, and a district administrator... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/3024155/assam-edge-indias-rohingya-moment-threatens-millions-modis-hindu?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/3024155/assam-edge-indias-rohingya-moment-threatens-millions-modis-hindu?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 23 Aug 2019 12:42:53 +0000 Returning to Hong Kong this time held a special attraction. It may sound like an odd thing to say now, what with the eventual flight cancellations and the disruption, but before it all escalated, there was no denying the mild thrill of anticipation of being greeted by a swarm of protesters at the airport. That doesn’t happen every day, and who doesn’t like a spirited protest? So, it was slightly disappointing to be deprived of this novelty on landing in Hong Kong last week. It was early morning,... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3023171/hong-kong-india-kashmir-china-right?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3023171/hong-kong-india-kashmir-china-right?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 17 Aug 2019 06:00:12 +0000 A terror strike on Indian security forces in the country’s restive Jammu and Kashmir province has raised renewed questions in India on China’s continued protection of the Pakistan-based terror outfit behind the attack, threatening to unravel a thaw between the Asian giants forged last year. In the deadliest ever attack in the region, over 40 Indian personnel were killed and many injured in the province’s Pulwama district on Thursday, when a suicide bomber targeted a convoy of 78 vehicles... https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/2186399/what-wuhan-spirit-kashmir-suicide-attack-reopens-modis-china?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/2186399/what-wuhan-spirit-kashmir-suicide-attack-reopens-modis-china?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 15 Feb 2019 15:01:06 +0000 There aren’t that many visitors at the “Breath and Life” exhibition on ancient traditional Chinese medicine at Doha’s sprawling Katara Cultural Village. It’s Ramadan, the middle of the day and 44 degrees outside – there aren’t that many visitors anywhere in the Qatari capital. It will pick up later in the day, an attendant tells me, as many are drawn especially by the free diagnosis offered by Chinese practitioners at the show. China is just what the doctor ordered for Qatar after its neighbours... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2149915/china-pillar-strength-qatars-fightback-against-arab-blockade?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2149915/china-pillar-strength-qatars-fightback-against-arab-blockade?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 09 Jun 2018 03:47:59 +0000 Faisal’s life has ground to a halt. Looking out forlornly to a lush paddy field, this “tricycle” – as the sidecar is called in the Philippine hinterland, where it’s the main mode of public transport – is waiting out its exile on the edge of a refugee camp. Now a heap of rusting metal and wood with a garnishing of creeping foliage, there’s no sign of the motorcycle that once drove it. Only the windscreen, washed by the frequent Mindanao showers, remains unconquered. Emblazoned with FAISAL in... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2147887/chinese-cash-american-muscle-and-marawis-discontents?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2147887/chinese-cash-american-muscle-and-marawis-discontents?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 26 May 2018 03:30:15 +0000 President Rodrigo Duterte is at sea again, navigating through unceasing Chinese militarisation off his shores on the one hand and growing domestic demand to assert the Philippines’ sovereignty on the other, even as he seeks friendlier relations with the Asian giant. After announcing with much fanfare plans to visit underwater plateau Benham Rise to mark the first anniversary of its renaming as Philippine Rise, Duterte this week decided not to go the distance after all. Flying to a navy ship... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2146843/philippines-rodrigo-duterte-wants-be-friends-why-isnt-china?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2146843/philippines-rodrigo-duterte-wants-be-friends-why-isnt-china?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 20 May 2018 04:02:02 +0000 A summit between President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi this week will mark a significant geopolitical shift as the leaders of the two estranged regional powers join forces amid a growing threat of US protectionism. It could lead to agreements on connectivity, investments and the border, sources said, although both China and India have billed it as an “unofficial” summit with no stated goals. “Both sides have agreed not to sign an agreement or release any joint document but... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2143161/trump-border-belt-and-road-and-investments-xi-modi-summit?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2143161/trump-border-belt-and-road-and-investments-xi-modi-summit?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 25 Apr 2018 01:30:29 +0000 “This looks like China, doesn’t it?” Deputy Inspector General Mandip Shrestha has his chest puffed out as he gives a tour of Nepal Armed Police Force’s freshly minted training academy. A swanky sprawl complete with a helipad, swimming pool, football ground, shooting range, soundproof meeting rooms, giant auditoriums and elegant red brick buildings, the hilltop campus with a sweeping view of the Kathmandu Valley is not your regular government installation in poorly developed Nepal. Shrestha can... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2134532/driven-india-chinas-arms-nepal-new-sri-lanka?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2134532/driven-india-chinas-arms-nepal-new-sri-lanka?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 25 Feb 2018 01:00:30 +0000 When Bishwesh Shrestha started out in 1997, he was a bit of an oddball in Kathmandu’s travel business fraternity. Not many were interested or cared about Chinese tourists. Nepal Airways had just one flight from Osaka through Shanghai, with just 20 seats reserved for Chinese passengers. But he was convinced that China was where the future lay. Shrestha convinced a relative who had studied in China and spoke the language to go into business with him. Together they went to China and got to know a... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/business/article/2134528/chinese-tourists-are-flooding-nepal-and-floodgates-havent-even?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/business/article/2134528/chinese-tourists-are-flooding-nepal-and-floodgates-havent-even?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 24 Feb 2018 06:35:00 +0000 Nepal’s new communist prime minister will restart a Chinese-led US$2.5 billion hydropower project that was pulled by the previous government considered friendly towards India, and wants to increase infrastructure connectivity with Beijing to ease the country’s reliance on New Delhi.  He also wants to “update” relations with India “in keeping with the times” and favours a review of all special provisions of Indo-Nepal relations, including the long-established practice of Nepalese soldiers serving... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2133845/nepal-leader-revive-chinese-dam-project-open-review-pact-over?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2133845/nepal-leader-revive-chinese-dam-project-open-review-pact-over?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 19 Feb 2018 10:30:45 +0000 Vinayak Bhat has been working hard these past months. The retired Indian colonel’s assiduous analysis of satellite images of Himalaya’s Doklam plateau has shredded the veil of peace laboriously woven by India and China since they pulled themselves back from the brink of war last summer, and is raising embarrassing questions for New Delhi on the deal it cut with Beijing to maintain peace in the Sikkim-Bhutan-Tibet “trijunction” area. In graphic reports on the online publication ThePrint, Bhat has... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2130797/china-and-india-are-war-clouds-gathering-over-doklam-again?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2130797/china-and-india-are-war-clouds-gathering-over-doklam-again?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 27 Jan 2018 04:00:30 +0000 The death of a judge three years ago has returned to haunt Narendra Modi’s government, opening a Pandora’s box of criminal cases dating back to the Indian prime minister’s earlier years as a provincial leader and triggering an open revolt in the highest court, the country’s most respected institution. The Supreme Court found itself in uncharted territory last week when four of its senior-most judges called a press conference and alleged misconduct by Chief Justice Dipak Misra for arbitrarily... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2129748/modi-dead-judge-and-ghosts-past?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2129748/modi-dead-judge-and-ghosts-past?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 20 Jan 2018 04:33:07 +0000 “I’ll liberate Africa with my penis,” declares Mustafa Sa’eed, a protagonist in Sudanese writer Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North, considered one of the most important works in Arab literature. Sa’eed, whose life coincides with the period of British colonisation of Sudan, is a brilliant student who goes on to study in Britain, shines in academia, shows political promise in his leadership of the anti-colonial struggle, and writes scholarly tomes. But he has a fatal flaw: he uses his... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2128072/trumps-big-button-thai-penis-whitening-hail-emperor-without-his?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2128072/trumps-big-button-thai-penis-whitening-hail-emperor-without-his?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 14 Jan 2018 04:04:31 +0000 The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s new war room for the Karanj Assembly seat in southern Gujarat’s Surat city wears a festive look. Local BJP workers have assembled at the hall in the new party office for the launch of a fresh initiative, a call centre, to reach out to voters for the crucial state election beginning this weekend that will test the popularity of their leader and prime minister, Narendra Modi. A round of ice cream is passed around the hall to mark the event. There’s a cake too –... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2123460/modis-gujarat-political-earthquake-or-mild-tremors?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2123460/modis-gujarat-political-earthquake-or-mild-tremors?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 09 Dec 2017 04:02:06 +0000 The blank stare of Mohammad Hussain speaks of a thousand persecutions. One afternoon in late September, when the 51-year-old Rohingya imam was visiting an adjoining village in his native Maungdaw district of Myanmar’s Rakhine state, he heard soldiers were heading to his village. He knew right away it was futile to go back to save his family. It was all up to Allah now. Ever since a militant Rohingya group attacked border security posts the previous month, the Myanmese military had hit back with... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2122416/tibetans-sri-lankans-india-welcomed-all-why-not-rohingya?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2122416/tibetans-sri-lankans-india-welcomed-all-why-not-rohingya?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 03 Dec 2017 03:45:30 +0000 All Nand Lal wants out of life is death. A good part of the 80-year-old retired soldier’s 10ft by 10ft tumbledown room on the outskirts of New Delhi is a humble home shrine of two idols of Hindu gods on a tattered piece of red cloth. Lal, a widower, lives in this rented room in a small house tucked away in a dingy lane all by himself, dependent on a part-time maid for the smallest of chores. Barely able to walk, see or hear, he spends most his days praying to those gods to end his misery. A year... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2119404/withdrawal-symptoms-cash-still-king-india-modi-not-so-much?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2119404/withdrawal-symptoms-cash-still-king-india-modi-not-so-much?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 12 Nov 2017 06:03:13 +0000 Friends don’t talk money, especially when the friendship is as special as the one India and the United States claim theirs to be. But as Narendra Modi is beginning to find out, there’s no such thing as a free hug, not in Trump World. Unveiling his much-awaited address on the strategy to end the Afghan conflict, Donald Trump this week said all the things that would gladden the heart of the Indian leader. He blasted India’s arch-rival Pakistan for sheltering terrorists and demanded Islamabad do... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2108363/atm-modi-squirms-trumps-afghan-embrace?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2108363/atm-modi-squirms-trumps-afghan-embrace?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 27 Aug 2017 04:17:42 +0000 As the Doklam military standoff in the China-India-Bhutan tri-junction enters its second month, the memories of a border war in 1962 have been stirring back to life. Chinese state media is warning of teaching India a lesson similar to 1962. The cover of the India Today magazine this week is asking ‘Will there be war?’ The People’s Liberation Army is urging the Indian Army to learn from history and stop “clamouring for war”. India’s defence minister is warning that India is not what it was in... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2105519/road-doklam-when-will-china-and-india-start-talking-about-1962?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2105519/road-doklam-when-will-china-and-india-start-talking-about-1962?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 05 Aug 2017 02:15:30 +0000 “Move over, Putin. Xi Jinping ( 習近平 ) is Trump’s new man-crush,” headlined Slate on a moonstruck US president who couldn’t stop gushing about the Chinese leader after their Mar-a-Lago summit three months ago. They had struck a “great chemistry” and “terrific relationship”, and the US and China would now work together, he declared to the world, in an extraordinary turnaround for a man who built a political career trashing China. The sole factor behind the change of heart was North Korea. He was... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2101765/china-and-north-korea-what-now-if-xi-trump-bromance-over?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2101765/china-and-north-korea-what-now-if-xi-trump-bromance-over?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 08 Jul 2017 02:30:15 +0000 That electric September night three years ago now seems like a distant dream. Visiting the United States for the first time after being elected India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi was soaking up the spotlight at a Madison Square Garden extravaganza. Cheered on by nearly 20,000 Indian Americans, he delivered a stirring “I have a dream” speech underlining India’s rise, the success of the Indian diaspora, and the strength of the bonds that tie the world’s two biggest democracies. India would... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2099770/what-are-chinas-stakes-unsure-modi-meets-unpredictable-trump?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2099770/what-are-chinas-stakes-unsure-modi-meets-unpredictable-trump?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 25 Jun 2017 04:30:00 +0000 What a difference a few months make. It was only October when Rodrigo Duterte announced his “separation” from treaty partner United States after months of an increasingly acrimonious marriage. “America has lost now,” the Philippine president pronounced at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. “I’ve realigned myself in your ideological flow and maybe I will also go to Russia to talk to [President Vladimir] Putin and tell him that there are three of us against the world – China, Philippines and... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/article/2098544/what-now-dutertes-china-pivot-marawi-cements-us-importance-philippines?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/article/2098544/what-now-dutertes-china-pivot-marawi-cements-us-importance-philippines?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 16 Jun 2017 10:30:00 +0000 Last month, the Australian cricket team dropped by the Dalai Lama’s McLeod Ganj monastery in northern India seeking “peace of mind”. Ahead of a Test match in a fractious series with India marked by sniping between the two sides, Aussie skipper Steve Smith asked the Tibetan spiritual leader for help with his sleep. The monk rubbed his nose against his, and Smith went back to his hotel hoping for better sleep during the five-day Dharamsala Test. The Dalai Lama’s other recent engagements have been... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2083799/why-china-india-and-dalai-lama-are-pushing-boundaries-tawang?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2083799/why-china-india-and-dalai-lama-are-pushing-boundaries-tawang?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 01 Apr 2017 01:00:45 +0000 In his first week in office, Narendra Modi’s surprise pick to run India’s most populous state has pretty much stuck to the script. The new chief minister has ordered a blueprint for better policing in crime-infested Uttar Pradesh and is cracking down on cow slaughter by shutting illegal abattoirs. Crime and cows – considered holy by Hindus – were among the top promises made by his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the recent state election. So was building a contentious Hindu temple. Now much will... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2081910/ram-redux-will-india-return-days-temple-strife?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2081910/ram-redux-will-india-return-days-temple-strife?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 26 Mar 2017 11:02:11 +0000 Dai Bingguo, former State Councillor and China’s special representative for border talks with India, said in an interview this month that a final settlement was within grasp. “After more than 30 years of negotiations, China and India are now standing in front of the gate towards a final settlement of their boundary question. Now, the Indian side holds the key to the gate,” Dai told a Beijing publication. That gate could well have just opened in Uttar Pradesh. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2079937/what-stronger-modi-means-china?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2079937/what-stronger-modi-means-china?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 19 Mar 2017 06:00:45 +0000 For a FRESH US immigrant yet to earn the right to vote, Avinash Iragavarapu hasn’t done too badly for himself this election. Not least because he helped put in office a man who ran on an anti-immigrant ticket. The executive director of the Republican Party in Arizona, 31-year-old Iragavarapu landed in the US just two years ago from India as a tourist. His breathtaking rise in the GOP is one of the most phenomenal – and curious – success stories in American politics today, arcing a political... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2063867/after-trump-next-stop-hong-kong-indian-data-wizard?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2063867/after-trump-next-stop-hong-kong-indian-data-wizard?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 20 Jan 2017 10:01:26 +0000 Former Bank of England governor Mervyn King would say boring is the ultimate quality of central banks. The wild excitement of demonetisation now makes one pine for the Reserve Bank of India’s stellar, boring old days. Through India’s socialist years and then through its reluctant transformation into market economy, India’s central bank has come to symbolise to its people a repository of knowledge, wisdom and stability, its corridors walked by technocrats from the rarefied world of finance whose... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2061878/reverse-bank-india-how-note-ban-has-turned-revered-institution?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2061878/reverse-bank-india-how-note-ban-has-turned-revered-institution?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 15 Jan 2017 05:00:15 +0000 Mahatma Gandhi had a simple solution for moments of indecision. “I will give you a talisman. Whenever you are in doubt…Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man whom you may have seen and ask yourself if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him,” famously wrote the “father of the nation”, whose face is printed on every Indian banknote. If Narendra Modi had to remember the faces of all the poor and the weak he has encountered in the course of 45 years of public life in a... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2060038/note-ban-will-it-make-india-or-break-modi?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2060038/note-ban-will-it-make-india-or-break-modi?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 08 Jan 2017 04:00:00 +0000 “Most people here can’t operate smartphones. Even if they could, most of the time you can’t charge your phone. And even if you can, there’s no internet access. In most villages nearby, they don’t even have running water. Cashless. Seriously? Why is it even a priority when there’s so much else to fix?” fumes Gopal Shivram Chauhan, who grows rice and lentils on his 9 hectares of land in Hirve, a small village just 150km from Mumbai. Chauhan employs 20-25 farmhands during the sowing and harvesting... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2059605/modis-cashless-payment-dream-meet-people-paying-it?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2059605/modis-cashless-payment-dream-meet-people-paying-it?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 07 Jan 2017 04:01:38 +0000 Across the road from Mumbai’s Dharavi, one of the world’s biggest slums, Altaf Sheikh is braving the afternoon blaze and the stench of garbage that hangs over the sprawling mangrove dump where many of the city’s sewers drain, diligently separating the copper from the tangle of wires he has bought this morning. For this back-breaking work, he used to make 700-800 rupees a day by selling back the copper to a trader in Dharavi, barely enough to support his family and survive in India’s most... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2059572/indias-note-ban-what-modi-can-really-achieve?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2059572/indias-note-ban-what-modi-can-really-achieve?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 06 Jan 2017 04:42:02 +0000 Sri Lanka will buy more military transport planes from China and seek its help in transforming its failed Hambantota port into a hub comparable with Shenzhen, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe told This Week in Asia in an exclusive interview. “I have travelled around in some of the Chinese transport planes we have. They are good workhorses. Some people have raised questions about their quality but I have always said, ‘Look, as far as I am concerned, I will always underwrite Chinese military... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2051323/exclusive-how-china-sri-lanka-relations-are-getting-new-wings?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2051323/exclusive-how-china-sri-lanka-relations-are-getting-new-wings?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 03 Dec 2016 02:00:00 +0000 “Indian and Chinese brains must be very differently wired,” China historian John Fairbank quipped to Subramanian Swamy one wintry morning in Harvard circa 1963. “I have never seen an Indian who has managed to learn Chinese.” That little joke was enough to get young Swamy to take up the challenge of learning Mandarin. Having finished his PhD in economics in one and a half years, he had plenty of time on hand. He learnt Mandarin in six months, he says, after which Harvard asked him to teach a... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2047376/indias-china-policy-target-says-modis-mandarin-speaking-guided?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2047376/indias-china-policy-target-says-modis-mandarin-speaking-guided?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 20 Nov 2016 08:00:15 +0000 A member of parliament and one of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s top aides has blamed poor planning and execution by the government for the banknote crisis that has engulfed India, with tens of thousands of people queueing up outside banks and empty ATMs following New Delhi’s decision to replace large-denomination notes with new ones. “I am appalled by the lack of preparation,” said Subramanian Swamy in an exclusive interview to This Week in Asia. A dogged crusader against corruption, who is... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2045567/modis-key-aide-blames-poor-planning-indias-currency-crisis?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2045567/modis-key-aide-blames-poor-planning-indias-currency-crisis?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 13 Nov 2016 10:04:49 +0000 “How many political parties do you think America has?” droned the college senior one autumn afternoon at a campus canteen in Calcutta. A week into college, a speech on class struggle is the last thing you want to hear in your downtime. But somehow, that question has remained lodged in my memory ever since, probably because it was the only time I mustered a response, if only to give my stubbly senior’s monologue the appearance of a conversation as a mark of respect. Or probably because it keeps... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2039066/trump-vs-clinton-spectacle-americas-one-party-election?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/2039066/trump-vs-clinton-spectacle-americas-one-party-election?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 22 Oct 2016 12:00:15 +0000 The last time Xi Jinping ( 習近平 ) visited India, two years ago, Narendra Modi made an unprecedented gesture of receiving the Chinese leader in his home state of Gujarat rather than the capital, Delhi. They signed billion-dollar deals, sat on a swing at a riverside park, smiled at each other, and the shutterbugs went nuts. There was hope in the air. Modi, freshly elected as India’s prime minister, was being widely hailed in the Chinese media as a possible Indian Nixon ­– a man with both the... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2028157/when-xi-meets-modi-little-less-love-time?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2028157/when-xi-meets-modi-little-less-love-time?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 15 Oct 2016 01:30:45 +0000 Swear all you want, but you know you’re doing your drug war all wrong if the United States says you are. Having messed it up for half a century, no one knows these things better than the US. Some 3,000 people have died in Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody campaign since he took power in the Philippines in June. Now he wants to extend it by six months because he needs time to “kill them all”. But point out the moral pitfalls of his murderous drive and you’ve had it, in colourful expletives, as Barack... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2022089/theres-too-much-drug-blood-americas-hands-lecture-philippines?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2022089/theres-too-much-drug-blood-americas-hands-lecture-philippines?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 24 Sep 2016 04:00:15 +0000 Last Christmas there was love in the air. Flying home from Afghanistan, Narendra Modi suddenly decided to stop over in Lahore to pay his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif a surprise visit, the first Indian prime minister to go to the estranged neighbour in nearly 12 years. The occasion for the unprecedented outreach: Sharif’s birthday and his granddaughter’s wedding. Sharif later hosted the wedding wearing a pink turban Modi brought as a gift. Pakistan happy to aid in China’s quest for land... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/article/2022087/why-china-caught-india-pakistan-crossfire?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/article/2022087/why-china-caught-india-pakistan-crossfire?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 24 Sep 2016 02:00:30 +0000 Whoever thinks China and India aren’t getting on, may need to get off the news for a while. The two countries may be at odds on a lot of things, from a troubled border to ocean navigation rights. But when it comes to their media, they are a picture of collaboration – obsessively following and reporting each other, and in the process creating perennial news loops the likes of which are seldom seen between two states not at war. Take the current sniping over BrahMos missile. It began with a Times... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2009579/how-india-and-china-go-war-every-day-without-firing-single?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2009579/how-india-and-china-go-war-every-day-without-firing-single?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 28 Aug 2016 06:00:15 +0000 In a dogfight mirroring the geopolitical intrigue on the ground, Asian fighter jets will jockey for billion-dollar military contracts and international clout when they take to the skies at the Bahrain Air Show that opens on Thursday. This will be the first time India’s home-made Tejas combat plane makes an appearance at a foreign air show, seeking to offer an alternative to the JF-17 Thunder built jointly by rivals China and Pakistan. The debut is being closely watched as it comes on the heels... https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/1903512/chinese-and-indian-fighter-jets-face-amid-regional-turf?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/1903512/chinese-and-indian-fighter-jets-face-amid-regional-turf?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 20 Jan 2016 15:00:30 +0000 New Delhi or Beijing? As Nepal’s new prime minister weighs his maiden foreign destination on assuming office, China finds itself in the middle of a high-stakes stand-off in South Asia, where its growing reach is prising open India’s hold over the region. “Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli has been invited by both India and China. He can visit either first. No decision has been made yet,” the Nepalese premier’s media adviser Pramod Dahal told the South China Morning Post. Dahal’s statement comes... https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/1898210/china-scores-nepal-plays-hardball-india-over-border?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/1898210/china-scores-nepal-plays-hardball-india-over-border?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 05 Jan 2016 13:45:30 +0000