India (Continuación)

MundoAsia, ,

Después de años de debate, el gobierno de la India anunció recientemente que abrirá el sector minorista del país a la inversión extranjera. La medida fue recibida con gritos de protesta de aquellos que sostienen que el ingreso de grandes cadenas de hipermercados como Carrefour y Wal-Mart arrasará a las pequeñas tiendas que actualmente dominan el sector minorista de la India. El 20 de septiembre, una huelga a nivel nacional convocada por los partidos de oposición paralizó muchas ciudades y pueblos. Hasta el momento, el gobierno del primer ministro Manmohan Singh no ha cedido, a pesar de haber perdido el apoyo de un aliado clave de la coalición.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsia

Throwing 10 percent of the world’s population into darkness is not a good way to advertise one’s “great power” credentials. India’s late-summer power outage, political dysfunction and slowing economic growth have engendered doubts among U.S. observers allayed only partly by the government’s recent announcement of economic reforms. For nearly a decade, India has represented Washington’s major strategic bet in Asia, a “natural ally” that was emerging as a strong, globally active and increasingly prosperous partner. Was this bet misguided?

We don’t think so. The short-run challenges to Indian power and progress in the relationship are daunting, and realism about the pace of both is in order.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsia,

Meena Devi is only 10 years old, but she’s the head of her household. She cooks, cleans and takes care of her 11-year-old brother, Sunil, while a 14-year-old brother, Anil, works at a faraway brick kiln in a neighboring state. The three have been orphans since their mother died of starvation three years ago. They have an aunt in their village, but the most she’s ever done is send over food to their mud hut.

In June, I wrote an article that appeared in The International Herald Tribune, documenting this family’s daily life in the impoverished eastern state of Bihar. E-mails started to pour in the next morning.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsiaInternacionalEconomía,

Los países asiáticos emergentes deberían estar orgullosos de la capacidad de resistencia de sus economías. A pesar de una situación mundial asolada por un débil crecimiento, un alto y persistente desempleo y fuertes niveles de endeudamiento, los países emergentes y en desarrollo de la región crecieron a un índice anual del 6,8% entre 2000 y 2010, apuntalando el producto global y sirviendo de apoyo a las iniciativas de recuperación.

El éxito de la región se ha basado en el dinámico crecimiento de China e India, que representan casi el 60% del PIB total del continente en términos de paridad de poder de compra.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAméricaMundoAsia,

Cuando las elecciones en los EE.UU. están a la vuelta de la esquina, tal vez el aspecto más llamativo desde el punto de vista indio es el de que nadie en Nueva Delhi está indebidamente preocupado por el resultado. Ahora existe un amplio consenso en los círculos políticos indios de que, sea quien fuere el que gane, las relaciones entre la India y los EE.UU. van más o menos por la vía correcta.

Esta situación se debe tanto a los demócratas como a los republicanos. La lograda visita del Presidente Barack Obama a la India en 2010 y su histórico discurso ante una sesión conjunta del Parlamento, constituyó el más importante hito reciente en las relaciones bilaterales.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsia

Tema: La desaceleración reciente del crecimiento puede poner en cuestión el “milagro” económico de la India e incluso su pretensión de convertirse en una superpotencia a medio plazo.

Resumen: Los datos más recientes de la evolución de la economía india parecen indicar una desaceleración importante y que puede ser duradera. En este análisis se expone, en primer lugar, el alcance de esa desaceleración, que ha llevado a la tasa de crecimiento del PIB del 9,2% al 5,3% en apenas un año. En segundo término, se enumeran las causas principales de esa evolución, destacando especialmente los factores internos (ya que, a diferencia de lo ocurrido en 2008-09, la desaceleración es, sobre todo, endógena).…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsia

Estados Unidos, recientemente, ha aliviado el peso de las sanciones contra Irán sobre las espaldas de India: ha concedido a India una exención respecto a las sanciones financieras relacionadas con Irán a cambio de recortes significativos de las compras indias de petróleo iraní. No obstante, Irán sigue proyectando una sombra sobre las positivas relaciones entre Estados Unidos e India. Desde la perspectiva de India, Irán es un vecino importante con el que difícilmente puede permitirse el lujo de llegar a una ruptura. De hecho, India parece hallarse bloqueada geográficamente en un arco de países fallidos o de problemático funcionamiento político e institucional de modo que ha de hacer frente a amenazas procedentes de prácticamente todas direcciones.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsia

Working at home in Kolkata, I'm surrounded by clouds that bring little rain, and by a strange calm. Daytime TV reveals how exceptional Kolkata's humdrum atmosphere is at the moment. The riots targeting Bangladeshi – and therefore Muslim – migrants in Assam have been competing for news time with the Olympics.

From BBC World, I learn of a massive power outage in north India, leaving even the capital New Delhi without electricity for several hours. And a train approaching Chennai in the south mysteriously caught fire, probably because of a glitch to do, ironically, with electricity, killing at least 32 people.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsia, , ,

Last September, a lawmaker in Indian-controlled Kashmir stood up in the state’s legislative assembly and spoke of a valley filled with human carcasses near his home constituency in the mountains: “In our area, there are big gorges, where there are the bones of several hundred people who were eaten by crows.”

I read about this in faraway London and was filled with a chill — I had written of a similar valley, a fictional one, in my novel about the lost boys of Kashmir. The assembly was debating a report on the uncovering of more than 2,000 unmarked and mass graves not far from the Line of Control that divides Indian- and Pakistani-controlled Kashmir.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsia

There's a party in the Asia Pacific, and the United States wants India to be its date. As U.S. foreign policy "pivots" away from the Middle East and Europe and toward Asia, U.S. officials are doing everything they can to cozy up to the nation that Mark Twain once called "the cradle of the human race."

America's courtship — a bipartisan effort — has included the great-power equivalent of sending flowers (civil nuclear technology underGeorge W. Bush), chocolates (more than $8 billion in U.S. arms during the last decade) and love letters (India is the only state deemed a "strategic partner" in the Pentagon's most recent strategy review).…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAméricaMundoAsia,

China’s slowing economy, Europe’s precarious fiscal crisis and the recent focus on Afghanistan at the NATO summit all point to challenges and opportunities for the United States — and for India. Growing cooperation over the past decade has brought our two democracies closer. With the Obama administration’s “rebalance to Asia,” now is the time to focus on tangible results that will deliver economic benefits to the middle classes of both countries.

This week’s “strategic dialogue” between Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna should prioritize the building of stronger trade and commercial relationships to compensate for losses in other global markets and to help people struggling at home.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsiaMundoOriente Próximo,

I was not allowed to sit in the foreigner’s section, given that I didn’t look foreign, and I didn’t want to tell them that I was. This was ironic, given that — as a Pakistani sitting on the Indian side of the border — they would consider me to be even more foreign than most foreigners.

The two people I was traveling with were allowed, and found themselves the choicest seats from which to see the spectacle. I had to sit way in the back, where the crowd was aggressive and male, and the soldiers were far-off and blurry.

The spectacle that my friends and I had come to see was the border ceremony at Wagah that takes place between Pakistan and India every day at sundown.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsia,

Una de mis fotografías favoritas muestra a un hombre santo hindú (sadhu) inmediatamente después de un ritual —con el cuerpo desnudo, la barba y los cabellos largos y enmarañados, la frente manchada de ceniza, un collar de meditación (rudraksha-mala) alrededor del cuello, en sí todo lo característico— charlando por un teléfono móvil. El contraste dice mucho sobre la India de hoy en día, la tierra de las paradojas, un país que, como escribí hace algunos años atrás, se las arregla para vivir en muchos y distintos siglos al mismo tiempo.

Hay algo muy especial acerca del sadhu y su teléfono móvil, porque es en el ámbito de las comunicaciones donde la transformación de la India ha sido más dramática en los últimos años.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsia,

"We urge all nuclear-capable states to exercise restraint regarding nuclear capabilities," a State Department spokesman said last month after India successfully blasted its new long-range Agni 5 missile into the Bay of Bengal. But he quickly softened the admonishment: "That said, India has a solid nonproliferation record."

Washington's oddly relaxed approach to India's nuclear program goes back to 2008, when Congress approved the U.S.-India Civil Nuclear Cooperation Agreement. Under it, India agreed to separate its military and civil nuclear facilities and to place the latter under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards in exchange for a U.S. guarantee to work toward full civil nuclear cooperation with New Delhi.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsiaMundoOriente Próximo, ,

Une fois n'est pas coutume, de bonnes nouvelles émergent d'Asie du Sud, l'une des régions les plus troublées de la planète. De la guerre en Afghanistan à la rivalité historique entre l'Inde et le Pakistan (deux Etats nucléaires) en passant par la lutte d'influence entre l'Inde et la Chine (autre puissance nucléaire), les foyers de crise n'y manquent pas. Ils se nourrissent même mutuellement dans une spirale triangulaire alimentant une inquiétante course aux armements.

Le Pakistan aurait déjà accumulé une centaine d'armes nucléaires. L'Inde, de son côté, s'impose désormais comme le premier importateur d'armes au monde. Illustration de son obsession chinoise, New Delhi a effectué avec succès, jeudi 19 avril, un tir d'essai d'un missile de longue portée.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsia, , ,

A subtle shift may be occurring in one of the world’s longest-standing and most intractable conflicts – the dispute between India and Pakistan over Kashmir. Increasingly, it seems, Pakistanis are questioning what the Kashmir dispute has done to their own state and society.

When Pakistan was carved out of India by the departing British in the 1947 Partition, the 562 “princely states” (regions nominally ruled by assorted potentates, but owing allegiance to the British Raj) were required to accede to either of the two new countries. The Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir – a Muslim-majority state with a Hindu ruler – dithered over which of the two to join, and flirted with the idea of remaining independent.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsia

Underlying the debate raging over British aid to India is the myth that the subcontinent's strong, market-driven growth of the past two decades has pulled hundreds of millions out of poverty. The economy is taking off; its people no longer need much aid, it is said.

In reality, since 1991, during which time India has experienced the highest growth in recent history, there has been no significant reduction in poverty or hunger. Two in every five children remain malnourished. A third of adults have an abnormally low body-mass index. Half of women of childbearing age are anaemic, a proportion far higher than in sub-Saharan Africa.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAméricaMundoAsia, ,

The launch of trilateral strategic consultations among the United States, India, and Japan, and their decision to hold joint naval exercises this year, signals efforts to form an entente among the Asia-Pacific region’s three leading democracies. These efforts – in the world’s most economically dynamic region, where the specter of a power imbalance looms large – also have been underscored by the Obama administration’s new strategic guidance for the Pentagon. The new strategy calls for “rebalancing toward the Asia-Pacific” and support of India as a “regional economic anchor and provider of security in the broader Indian Ocean region.”

At a time when Asia is in transition and troubled by growing security challenges, the US, India, and Japan are seeking to build a broader strategic understanding to advance their shared interests.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsia,  

At a time when the specter of a power imbalance looms large in Asia, the just-concluded visit of Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda of Japan to India cemented a fast-growing relationship between two natural allies. The path has been opened to adding concrete strategic content to their ties, including by building close naval collaboration.

The balance of power in Asia will be determined by events principally in two regions: East Asia and the Indian Ocean. Japan and India thus have an important role to play to advance peace and stability and help safeguard vital sea lanes in the wider Indo-Pacific region, marked by the confluence of the Indian and Pacific Oceans.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAsia,

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, after having passed the lower house two days earlier. The episode, which leaves the bill in suspended animation until its possible revival at the next session, raises fundamental issues for Indian politics which will need to be addressed in the New Year.

The need for the bill – Lokpal loosely translates as “ombudsman” – was first mooted in 1968, but eight subsequent attempts to create one had never reached a parliamentary vote.…  Seguir leyendo »