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Ironic as it may seem, the Obama administration’s foreign policy and Donald Trump’s call for its recalibration are both inspired by the same desire to prevent any new challenge to American supremacy In recent weeks, we have been watching an extraordinary spectacle in the country often described as the world’s greatest democracy. Barely weeks before demitting office, President Barack Obama introduced new sanctions against Russia and ordered expulsion of its diplomats from the U.S. A Congressional hearing was hastily arranged on alleged Russian hacking operations. Then came the “leaks” that Russia had compiled damaging personal information to potentially blackmail Donald Trump, the then U.S. President-elect. Their origin and authenticity remain in doubt. In a country proud of its traditional freedom of views and expression, we heard demands for action against Russian media agencies for misleading Americans about the true nature of their democracy! It was a strange manifestation of a...

The AIADMK and the DMK have a shared legacy of social reform, commitment to State autonomy and fiscal federalism. In this phase of centralisation, they need to forge a political culture to cooperate on key issues It is not easy to fill the vacuum caused by the departure of a popular and charismatic leader. However, this vacuum is not a permanent state. If personalities of equal or even slightly less stature are unavailable, significant political space opens up for other players, principally political rivals or those of a similar ideological persuasion, to capitalise on the situation. Or, as a temporary phenomenon, pretenders claiming to be true legatees of the departed leader, or those claiming to espouse the same causes as her, could emerge as key players. Bargaining power with the Centre In Tamil Nadu, the unexpected demise of Jayalalithaa hardly six months into her fourth substantive term as Chief Minister seems to have created such a vacuum. There is no second-line leadership, non...

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decision to abruptly withdraw legal tender status for Rs.1,000 and Rs.500 notes to save the country from “the grip of corruption and black money” has had one predictable side effect: a dampening of economic activity. With cash availability significantly impaired as a result of the sudden withdrawal of the high-value banknotes that constituted more than 86 per cent of the currency in circulation as of March 31, a palpable impact has been felt across the entire economy. A snapshot of manufacturing from the Nikkei India Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index released on December 1 revealed that demonetisation had slowed buying activity and production across the board, and led to the weakest expansion in orders in four months. The survey indicated that producers of consumer goods are among the worst hit, a signal that a key engine of India’s world-leading pace of economic growth — private consumption demand — appears to be sputtering on account of the cas...

ne occasion in the latter half of the 20th century, the U.K. and the then Soviet Union had expelled as many as a hundred diplomats from their respective countries. In the past too, Indian Prime Ministers had reached out to their Pakistani counterparts, hoping to find a solution to problems that eluded their diplomats. The Indian side — with the benefit of hindsight — at times had been over-generous (the Simla Agreement in 1972 between Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and Pakistan Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, for example). Such initiatives were hailed when made, but reviled in the absence of any real progress. The Pakistani side has been more consistent, using such occasions to extract maximum benefits for itself, with little ‘give’ on their part. Yet, India has persisted on this path. Both Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee were recent practitioners of this ‘art of the possible’. The debris of successive setbacks: Lahore (1999) and Agra (20...