While everyone sorts out just what Elections 2009 meant for the Congress, the BJP, the Left- what has perhaps crept up on all concerned, unnoticed is what the election verdict has meant for India-Pakistan ties. The solid mandate the UPA recieved has now allowed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to take off for Russia with ease, his officials making it very clear that he will be meeting with President Zardari on the sidelines of the SCO summit- and holding talks with him. Gone is the shifty eyed south-block diplomatic speak- 'they will meet, but not talk, they will talk, but it wont be substantive, it will be substantive but wont change ground realities, etc etc.' That sort of diffidence is what characterized so many of our past engagements with our neighbour- In Agra post Kargil and Kandahar, in Kathmandu post the Parliament attack, all the way to Havana post the Mumbai train attacks in 2005. Every time- the outrage and anger over the...

The first call I made when I saw the pictures on TV was to Neelan Thiruchelvam's son. Neelan was our sounding board whenever we landed in Colombo - soft-spoken, camera-shy, this Tamilian in the Sri Lankan capital always had a way of making himself heard. When he came up with a plan for devolution for Tamil-majority areas, he was mocked by many Sinhalas, and sent a death warrant by Prabhakaran. On July 29, 1999, Neelan, peace petitioner and human rights activist was killed in the most horrific way - as his car stopped at a traffic light on his way to work- a suicide bomber came up to his window and exploded. What many who confuse the LTTE with 'Sri Lankan Tamils' seem to consistently forget is that Prabhakaran killed more Tamils than Sri Lankan forces and the IPKF are accused of doing. Not to mention more than 2,000 Indian soldiers. From the early 80s he systematically co-opted or assassinated...

It's all relative, beta Varun I am a younger child so I know. My elder sister was always having to pull me back from the brink of doing something outrageous, constantly aware that my next escapade would be even more so. It's a younger child thing. Younger kids get less of their parent's attention: they come into the world with the odds of competing exactly double that of their elder siblings. And face about half of their parents resolve' in disciplining them too. They learn quickly that they need to scream louder to be heard, but they can also get away with a lot more as a result- and lets face it, more often than not, they are cuter. A few years ago, I would use the simile to explain Pakistan's problem with India when it cried foul over Bush's announcement of the Indo-US nuclear deal. I travelled to Islamabad just ahead of Bush's flight from New Delhi and was constantly...

It's ironic that the day Pakistan's government agreed to a deal to impose Shari'a in Swat and other parts came on the 20th anniversary of the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. Because there were early warnings and signals that the US and the world community ignored at their peril in 1989, and there are the same ominous signs that the world isn't acting on today either. In 1989- Washington was only too eager to hand over Afghanistan to the forces that gave rise to the Taliban and close the chapter on its own assistance to them against the Soviets- in 2009 that haste is being paid for by the entire world. In that sense, the imposition of Shari'a- is not just evidence of a creeping fundamentalism that has spread from Kabul to Peshawar- it must be seen as an important power shift in the region. In September 1996, the Taliban took Kabul and hanged Najibullah- in February 2009 they've simply battered the government of...