Month: January 2015

President Obama Can Help Bring Peace in South Asia

“We should probably try to facilitate a better understanding between Pakistan and India and try to resolve the Kashmir crisis…” President Obama, October 30, 2008
 
Your planned visit to India has inspired hopes, in the hearts of Americans of Kashmiri origin, that your global statesmanship may move the frozen dispute over the status of Kashmir towards a settlement based on justice and rationality. We would hasten to add that while we are fully aware of the multiplicity of issues that you will be devoting your time and attention during your forthcoming visit to India, you may perhaps like to remember that Kashmir is not a new issue, having been on the agenda of and in the cognizance of the United Nations for nearly 68 years.  Ironically, it is the only entity in the region of South Asia which has so far been denied the opportunity to determine its political future.

Bad for Business: India’s White Elephant Kashmir – Part 2

Ultimately the referendum in Scotland was held in a peaceful manner, and the people decided according to their own free will not to be an independent nation. This was undoubtedly a victory for democratic principles and universal values. The people of Kashmir do not want anything more than that. They want the same principle to be equally applicable to Kashmir. Let the people decide.

Bad for Business: India’s White Elephant Kashmir – Part 1

It is nothing less than astounding that intelligent men who are charged with the responsibility of leading a country cannot comprehend that spending billions of dollars to maintain possession of a very small disputed territory to its north with millions of troops at the expense of their own national quality of life makes any sense at all. While millions of Indians don’t even have a toilet (As Prime Minister Modi said, “My real thought is to first have toilets and then temples”)and live in squalor in cardboard shelters, the government feeds off their meager incomes in order to possess and control a nation that itself is kept in a dire state economically and cannot possibly pay any return on such an investment.