Analyses

In October, the husband and wife pair of Munir Ahmad and Syeda, farmers of Laskhar Pur village in Pakistan's Duzafargarh district with their six children, should have been planting wheat. Only, they weren't for their four acres of land that normally produces two crops a year of cotton and wheat, had been damaged by the floods. They had tried hard to protect their fields by building mud embankments, but the floods were unprecedented. The flooding destroyed their cotton crop that had been close to...

The frantic air-dashes by Union home ministry officials to Assam is telling. The possibility of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence fishing in the troubled demographic waters of the state is not a mere bogey any more. What was an impending threat only a few years back is now a reality. What was a pernicious pathogen till yesterday, has today infected the host and spread to such an extent that its debilitating effects are already beginning to show. The days of crying wolf for politicians are...

The tragedy of the Naga political movement has been the annihilation of Nagas by Nagas themselves. The Nagas have remained cleaved along various schools of thought. Between radicals and moderates (from the killing of Theyieu Sakhrie to that of Kaito Sema) among the insurrectionists themselves. Also between those underground and those overground (from the killing of Imkongliba Ao to that of the Kevichusa brothers). And somewhere complicating all these delicate equations and rendering all...