While voters pay attention to the promises of an Opposition party, they factor in only the achievements of the ruling side.
"Cultural values, national security, protection of the weaker sections": these are a few of the excuses offered by those who operate from (im)purely commercial motives as they block competition through ministries or the courts preventing fresh capacity.
Instead of using the Joint Parliamentary Session method sanctioned by the Constitution of India to get through essential business, the Modi govt decided to seek a Rajya Sabha super majority by making every state election as important to the BJP government as the national polls.
Even the CBI or the ED, those immensely useful tools of practical statecraft, will find it a tough slog to separate Mayawati from Akhilesh Yadav in Uttar Pradesh, or to break up the Rahul-Lalu combo in Bihar, the two states responsible for the present BJP Lok Sabha majority.
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"The South China Sea is fast becoming a Chinese lake, given the density of PLAAF and PLAN military bases created within its waters."
In the case of “Mao’s heir” Xi, although almost all such activity remains hidden from the outside world, criticism of the functioning of the Office of the General Secretary (OGS) has been growing inside the higher ranks of the CCP.
More than the party secretariat or the civilian side of the central government, it is the military that has the most influence in the thinking of the present 🇨🇳 CCP General Secretary.
It was apparent from 1959 onwards that it would only be a question of “when” and not “whether” the Peoples Liberation Army 🇨🇳 would be unleashed on its counterpart in India 🇮🇳.
If 1962 was the year in which Mao had decided to “teach India a lesson”, it made sense to ensure that a reliable and friendly partner, the Burmese military, took charge in Rangoon from a civilian government that was more independent of Beijing.
The 2021 military coup in Myanmar has to be looked at in the context of the very possible preparations that are ongoing within the PRC military for a large-scale armed showdown on the border with India aimed at securing control of large chunks of our territory... .
The US wanted to assist Tibetan resistance movements through supplies of weapons, but could not do so because Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru refused to permit such items from being transported through India.
It was believed by Nehru that the blank cheque he handed over to Chairman Mao on Tibet in 1950 would be repaid by the latter’s formal acceptance of the McMahon Line as the frontier between India and China.
Amazingly, the entry of the PLA into Aksai Chin was not even mentioned by the Indian side but neither was the implicit offer of Premier Zhou accepted that Aksai Chin would remain with the PRC but the line in the rest of the frontier would become the agreed boundary.
The higher an individual has progressed within the CCP, the more has been his or her awareness of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union General Secretary who presided over the demise of the USSR. Not as someone to emulate, but as an example to avoid.
Unlike in the case of the US and the USSR, where almost all the concessions made went one way, from the USSR to the very country eager to witness its demise, the PRC has been at the receiving end of concessions from Washington that have boosted its technology and the economy.
Should incoming President Joseph R. Biden Jr revert to the China-friendly policies of the Clinton era, voter backlash against the Democratic Party would be severe.
President Donald J. Trump has had more than a few successes during his term, and Benjamin Netanyahu behaved with gratitude and courtesy in thanking him for some of them, which included the welcome escape of Israel from the diplomatic quarantine of so many Arab states.
In the case of that often ignored democracy, Taiwan, Trump has done more to secure that country from a PLA takeover than any of his predecessors since Jimmy Carter initiated the pro-PRC tilt.
The problem with Trump is that he has had a lifelong obsession with the dollar, which the 45th US President clearly values above all else, save perhaps Ivanka, Melania and Barron.
The Supreme Court of India deserves gratitude from those who believe in the values of freedom and democracy. That “jail is the exception and bail is the rule” has been repeated endless times, yet it appears to many in India that jail is the norm and bail the exception.
So far as the media is concerned, over the years dozens of journalists have been sent to jail in states across the country. Some have been silenced in a more permanent way.
In another field, numerous personnel connected to India’s nuclear and missile industries succumbed to “suicides”, “accidents” & “break-in murders” since the 1990s, when President Clinton declared a public as well as a covert war on both nuclear & missile activity in our country.