Showing 1 - 10 of 10
What Modi has figured out that Trump never has
News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 21/03/2024
» Excitement and uncertainty used to accompany general elections in India. Polls swung back and forth, coalitions formed and reformed, analysts dissected policy platforms and assessed the prospects of hundreds of individual candidates. As India embarked on its 18th general election campaign on Tuesday, there is no electricity in the air. It is hard to find anyone who believes Prime Minister Narendra Modi will lose his bid for a third term in office.
Has Pakistan's military finally lost its mystique?
News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 14/02/2024
» Its leader was clapped in jail, its ballot symbol erased, and its candidates forced to run as independents -- and yet the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party of former prime minister Imran Khan shockingly pulled ahead of its two biggest rivals in last week's elections. Although Pakistan's powerful army did not conceal its desire to end Khan's political career, many voters clearly had other ideas. In the process, they have delivered an unprecedented and shocking rebuke to the military brass who have exerted inordinate influence over the country's fate since its birth in 1947.
Investment will not bring peace to Kashmir
News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 08/08/2019
» India's parliament has rubber-stamped the government's decision to end Kashmir's 70 years of autonomy and turn it into a "union territory" closely supervised by New Delhi.
Nobody's got a clue on India's poll
News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 14/03/2019
» India's parliamentary elections are like no others in the world. Nine hundred million people are eligible to vote in 2019, for 573 constituencies -- the largest of which contains almost three million voters. The country will take 39 days to vote; some states, like giant Uttar Pradesh with a population of 200 million, will vote in seven stages. And, on May 23, we will get to know who won.
US reign at World Bank must end now
News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 08/02/2019
» In many ways, David Malpass, whom US President Donald Trump nominated to head the World Bank, is an unsurprising choice. He's a senior Treasury official overseeing international affairs. Plus, his background absolutely screams "Trump nominee": He isn't a woman (Indra Nooyi, formerly of PepsiCo Inc, was being considered). He is an outspoken critic of the institution he is now to head (recall Scott Pruitt's tenure at the Environmental Protection Agency). And he has a controversial Wall Street background (he was chief economist at the ill-fated Bear Stearns), as well as some embarrassing calls in his past (he wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed in 2007 insisting that the housing market couldn't pull down the broader economy).
Politics as usual in India again
News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 05/02/2019
» India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi is in a spot of trouble. He has to face reelection in a few months amid growing dissatisfaction with his government's performance; he's likely to use every lever available to eke out a win. One such lever, unfortunately, was the interim federal budget that his lame-duck government presented last week, to keep official machinery running till the next government can come in with a mandate and make decisions about taxation and spending. As many of us feared, Mr Modi broke with bipartisan convention: He used the occasion essentially to launch his election appeal to India's voters. And, unfortunately, it's one that they have heard before.
China's Sri Lankan push for power
News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 31/10/2018
» Most people in the island nation of Sri Lanka and its Asian neighbours were stunned last week when President Maithripala Sirisena dismissed Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe -- and replaced him with Mahinda Rajapaksa, the populist strongman who had ruled Sri Lanka for a decade before the scrappy alliance between Mr Sirisena and Mr Wickremesinghe forced him out of power in 2015.
Pakistan's army takes on wrong fight
News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 16/07/2018
» Nawaz Sharif -- dodgy businessman, convicted criminal and thrice prime minister of Pakistan -- showed on Friday, in his triumphant return to Pakistan, that he remains by far the country's most popular politician. Infuriatingly, he also represents Pakistan's best chance at becoming a "normal" country anytime soon. As he fights what looks very much like an attempt by the military to decide the next election, the rest of us should hope he succeeds.
Modi should fear strength of opposition
News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 22/05/2018
» As a politician, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is distinguished by his relentlessness. Every vote, every constituency, every election matters. Mr Modi has built his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) into an electoral juggernaut that runs 21 of India's 29 states; 70% of India's population is ruled by the BJP at both the state and the federal level.
Don't expect young to save centrism
News, Mihir Sharma, Published on 16/05/2017
» At a victory rally for France's young new President Emmanuel Macron outside the Louvre last week, I was struck by the generational gap between the candidate and his most animated supporters.