South Asia

37 Items

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Magazine Article - Forbes

U.S. Ambassador To India Richard Verma Leaves A Lasting Legacy To Follow

| Feb. 03, 2017

Richard Verma’s two-year tenure as U.S. Ambassador to India concluded last month with the new incoming presidential administration. During his time in New Delhi, Verma established himself as one of the most consequential envoys to ever occupy the prestigious post once held by such foreign policy legends as John Kenneth Galbraith and Frank Wisner. The first Indian American to serve in the role, Verma leaves behind a far-reaching legacy. He raised the U.S-India strategic partnership to unparalleled heights in virtually every arena of bilateral cooperation while serving as a skilled and talented public diplomat.

Skulls at site of executions ordered by Pakistan military officials, Bangladesh, December 13, 1971.

AP

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

Bargaining Away Justice: India, Pakistan, and the International Politics of Impunity for the Bangladesh Genocide

    Author:
  • Gary Bass
| Fall 2016

During the 1971 Bangladesh war for independence from Pakistan, the Pakistan army carried out a genocide that killed hundreds of thousands of Bengalis in what was then East Pakistan. The perpetrators never faced trial. Archival documents reveal how India and Bangladesh sacrificed the opportunity for war crimes trials to gain Pakistan’s agreement on key security goals—the Simla peace agreement and recognition of Bangladesh’s independence. The legacy of this decision continues to blight Bangladesh’s politics.

A rural stove using biomass cakes, fuelwood and trash as cooking fuel... It is a major source of air pollution in India, and produces smoke and numerous indoor air pollutants at concentrations 5 times higher than coal.

Wikipedia

Journal Article - Nature Energy

Energy decisions reframed as justice and ethical concerns

| 6 May 2016

Many energy consumers, and even analysts and policymakers, confront and frame energy and climate risks in a moral vacuum, rarely incorporating broader social justice concerns. Here, to remedy this gap, we investigate how concepts from justice and ethics can inform energy decision-making by reframing five energy problems — nuclear waste, involuntary resettlement, energy pollution, energy poverty and climate change — as pressing justice concerns.

East Pakistanis, fleeing from their homes to seek safety in India, as they pass through the provisional capital of Chuadanga April 16, 1971.

AP

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

Pakistan's Forgotten Genocide—A Review Essay

| Fall 2014

In The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide,Gary Bass argues that both the Nixon administration and the global community purposely ignored Pakistan’s genocide of civilians in East Pakistan. Sumit Ganguly reviews the book and reflects on the significance of the 1971 genocide.

Ethnofederalism: The Worst Form of Institutional Arrangement…?

Getty Images

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

Ethnofederalism: The Worst Form of Institutional Arrangement…?

    Author:
  • Liam Anderson
| Summer 2014

Critics of ethnofederalism—a political system in which federal subunits reflect ethnic groups’ territorial distribution—argue that it facilitates secession and state collapse. An examination of post-1945 ethnofederal states, however, shows that ethnofederalism has succeeded more often than not.

Newspaper Article - The Hindu

Hard Choices at Copenhagen

    Author:
  • Jairam Ramesh
| June 19, 2014

During the Climate Change Conference in 2009, the Obama-BASIC meeting was a watershed, saving Copenhagen from a complete collapse and also marking the emergence of the BASIC quartet as a major force in international climate policy diplomacy.

Dec. 16, 2011: an Indian laborer sits on bales of cotton at a cotton mill in Dhrangadhra, India. The Indian parliament was informed earlier that week that about 90 percent of India's cotton crop is Bt. The transgenic seeds have increased the yield.

AP Photo

Journal Article - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

Economic Impacts and Impact Dynamics of Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) Cotton in India

    Authors:
  • Jonas Kathage
  • Matin Qaim
| July 2012

Despite widespread adoption of genetically modified crops in many countries, heated controversies about their advantages and disadvantages continue. Especially for developing countries, there are concerns that genetically modified crops fail to benefit smallholder farmers and contribute to social and economic hardship. Many economic studies contradict this view, but most of them look at short-term impacts only, so that uncertainty about longer-term effects prevails. The authors address this shortcoming by analyzing economic impacts and impact dynamics of Bt cotton in India.