Category: India

Modern Yoga in the Place of Yogis

In the past decade the worldwide yoga industry has become a multi-billion-dollar business. Yet, ironically, the one country where yoga does not yet thrive commercially is the very place from which yoga is thought to originate: India. Why should this be?

This paradox emerges, in part, because the practice known as ‘yoga’ around the world is a modern invention of the globalised and capitalist 20th century. A brief look at the history of yoga may help to explain why this industry has not had a straightforward development in India.

The BJP’s Declining Political Fortune

The tale of the recent February Delhi assembly elections shows how quickly political fortunes can decline. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) recorded a landslide victory at the 2014 national elections and won a majority of seats in three subsequent state elections. But his party suffered a crushing defeat in Delhi, winning just three of the 70 seats. The unexpected defeat dents the image of electoral invincibility of both the BJP and Modi.

Can Modi’s Plan for India Survive Past the Post-Election Honeymoon Period?

When India opted for constitutional democracy in 1947, few gave it much of a chance. India’s diversity was overwhelming and it was home to some of the world’s poorest. But India’s democracy has succeeded beyond the expectations of even the most optimistic and faired far better than that of similarly placed countries.

The 16th general election held in 2014 once again demonstrated the faith of most Indian citizens in democracy.

Will India’s Interest Rate Cut Get It Ahead of the Economic Curve?

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has eased its policy stance, cutting interest rates before it was expected to do so. This generated unnecessary controversy from the media and market analysts, who alleged political pressure lowered policy rates. But the case for a cut and change to a more accommodative stance had become compelling.  The fall in trend rates of inflation required this cut.

Good Governance as Part of the Answer to Improving India’s Economic Reforms

India’s new government faces challenges for economic revival, but it also has a golden opportunity to build consensus for strong structural and fiscal reform.

Restoring growth is paramount. In the last two years, growth has slipped below 5 percent, the lowest in a decade. ‘Execution bottlenecks’ in large infrastructure projects and massive declines in private and public investments are the causes. But economic growth has been one of the stimulants of India’s massive reduction in absolute poverty. It is essential to bring it back.

Improving India’s Bilateral Investment Treaties

President Barack Obama’s recent visit to India will kick-start stalled negotiations on a bilateral investment treaty (BIT) between the US and India that has been under sporadic discussion since 2008, aimed at facilitating greater cross-border investment flows.

Few Will Miss India’s Planning Commission

The Planning Commission is dead: long live the National Institution for Transforming India (NITI).

The role and remit of India’s new planning institution has been under debate ever since Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his Independence Day address announced the demise of the Planning Commission. In the Cabinet Resolution passed on 7 January, the government has announced the broad contours of the NITI, whose role in India’s policymaking ecosystem will be different to that of the Planning Commission.

Is a Hindu Nationalist Agenda Slowing Modi’s Agenda?

Entering 2015 with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in power at the federal level in India, there appears to have been a metamorphosis in India’s social, political and economic environment. The BJP and its coalition was voted into power in 2014 in a landslide victory, promising ‘development’ for India. But Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s development agenda has been held back by attempts to promote Hindu nationalism.

India’s Modi Ruling with an Old Playbook, but with Style

The story of 2014 in India was the story of Narendra Modi’s rise from chief minister of Gujarat to prime minister of India. Son of a tea stall owner and once associated with the 2002 massacre of Muslims on his watch as chief minister, Modi electrified the electorate during a six-month campaign. He led his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to an absolute parliamentary majority for the first time, while reducing the long dominant Indian National Congress (INC) to a seat total too low to qualify for official parliamentary opposition status.