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Drishtikone

Asia

Total Posts : 71 posts

Mind-Blowing Pictures of World War II Relics in Ocean and Jungles
Asia

Mind-Blowing Pictures of World War II Relics in Ocean and Jungles

The Guadacanal is an island in Solomon Islands, a small nation.  During World War II, a major battle was fought here called the Guadalcanal Campaign,  or theBattle of Guadalcanal.  It was code-named Operation Watchtower.  Solomon Islands is a country over 28,400 square kms with 6 major and 900 smaller

06 Dec 16 5 min read
Can a Prosperous Society Promote Well-being of its Citizens?
Economics

Can a Prosperous Society Promote Well-being of its Citizens?

This decidedly is technologically the most advanced generation ever on this planet in many ways.  Science, material science at least, has reached amazing peaks.  Ordinary men and women now can do what many powerful kings could never dream of. Despite all this progress, however, have we been able to achieve

23 Oct 16 3 min read
Detailed Historical Context of the Kashmir Issue
Geo-Political

Detailed Historical Context of the Kashmir Issue

Kashmir issue has been a sticky issue for India and has been used by Pakistan to hit at India.  But things have changed since the Modi government came.  The skeletons are tumbling out from the closet and we are learning the truth.  Let us get it all out clearly. [lwptoc

25 Aug 15 14 min read
Events

5 Facts of Indo-Pak History and Why Diplomacy is Useless

The recent NSA talks have – as the author had predicted – been called off by Pakistan.  Numerous analysts and commentators in India and the opposition parties – apart from the various intriguing folks in Pakistan – have been coming up with their own versions of the situation. 5 Facts of Indo-Pak History and

24 Aug 15 14 min read
India

What is Rashtra Dharma or Duty to Nation: Chanakya-speak

What is Rashtra Dharma (or Duty to your Nation)?  Is it sucking up to the dynasties?  Or is it Unity, integrity, security and prosperity of your mother-land? Chanakya deals with these questions very effectively in this one interaction.  Whatever he says is still relevant… just replace Nand-vansh with Gandhi dynasty

19 Apr 13 1 min read
Pakistan

Distortion of Pakistan’s History: Discussion by Dr. Tahir Qazi

Pakistan’s history has been specifically created for a certain agenda by its establishment.  These days many analysts are revisiting the history of Pakistan and looking at things that are not just astonishing but also very enlightening.  This is a discussion on the TV program “Bilatakalluf with Tahir Gora”.  The

25 Mar 13 2 min read
India

India #1 traffic source for Quora ahead of US now!

Quora is a great site for Question and Answers.  People ask interesting questions and there are experts who come out with very details and informative answers.  And it seems that the Argumentative Indians have suddenly taken a lead on this site.  India is now the #1 source of traffic to

27 Feb 13 1 min read
Humour

Funniest Experiences on a train in India

Indian Railways is an amazing enterprise because of its sheer volume and scale.  Life on Indian trains is of another world.  But some experiences leave you completely bewidered and laughing.  Here are some shared by a regular Indian traveler. Read Quote of Adrianna Tan’s answer to Travel: What are

15 Feb 13 1 min read
History

Was Lal Bahadur Shastri Assassinated? By whom?

Lal Bahadur Shastri was the Prime Minister who almost led India to a victory, when he had to go to Tashkent to talk of truce with Pakistan.    We have discussed it earlier in our blog post “The Betrayal of Tashkent in 1965 [http://www.patheos.com/blogs/drishtikone/betrayal-tashkent-1965/]“.  Here

13 Feb 13 1 min read
Creative

Chobi Mela: an International Photography Festival in Bangladesh

Chobi Mela, the first festival of photography in Asia, is one of the most exciting ventures that Drik has initiated. The first Chobi Mela – International Festival of Photography was held Dec.1999-January 2000.  It is held every two years in Dhaka. The festival examines the dramatic shifts in image production,

28 Jan 13 1 min read
Religion

Pope wants Faithful to “convert” to Twitter

While trying to enter Asia to spread the “Christian Good News”, a euphemism for converting the local populations – while decimating the local cultures and myriad of belief systems and rituals as new “Walmartization” of culture happens – Pope now wants to enter a new territory.   Social Media. He has a new

27 Jan 13 1 min read
China

Is China’s Fast-Growing Economy Headed for a Crash?

Will the Chinese economy continue its torrid pace of growth and overtake the U.S.’s top status? Or is it a bubble destined to burst, taking the world economy down with it? Paul Solman interviews a highly-respected China “bull” and a prominent China “bear” as part of his ongoing

24 Jan 13 1 min read
Indian Media Onslaught in Pakistan
Achievement and Leadership

Indian Media Onslaught in Pakistan

This, as we discussed earlier, is a very common topic on the Pakistani channels.  And, it is interesting to see the views of the Pakistani media people ABOUT the media and its showing. I was kind of intrigued – not entirely shocked though (I expect a lot of things from Pakistani

14 Dec 12 3 min read
History

Chanakya’s speech on how to keep Hinduism alive

Chanakya TV series was one of the best ever.  Many people I know still go back to it.  Chanakya was an inspiring personality in his own time and even now.  He brought the nation of India together in a way that no one had done before him or later.  He

10 Dec 12 2 min read
Asia has no Religion, its a Western construct
Asia

Asia has no Religion, its a Western construct

Came across a very interesting article on Huffington Post: Why doesn’t Asia have Religion? [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thomas-david-dubois/does-asia-have-religion_b_1031869.html] It is a point that is important to make and so difficult to do so in the current world, which has been contaminated by the very

01 Dec 12 3 min read
Asia

40% of all Blog Posts in the world are in Japanese!

Came across a very interesting article about the blogging trends in Japan and India vis-a-vis the Western Blogosphere.  It seems, even though English speakers to Japanese Speakers ratio is 5:1 in the world, the blogosphere is dominated by Japanese as opposed to English in terms of number of blogs.

20 Nov 12 1 min read
Asia

Do Blood Groups define Personality Types and Belief System?

World of Japanese Blood Group DynamicsJapan is a remarkably homogenous country and people have to invent differences for prejudice to find a play.  For, differences bring distinctions for some and inferiority for others. So they have come up with Blood Type defining the character, temperament and personality of people.  In

06 Nov 12 3 min read
Asia

Japanese Investors moving out of China into India

Tensions between China and Japan are running high these days.  And from the looks of it, it doesn’t seem like this will come down anytime soon.  One of the consequences of this is that the Japanese companies are switching [http://www.tokyotimes.com/2012/japanese-investors-are-switching-from-china-to-india/] from China to India

24 Oct 12 1 min read
Asia

Pictures from Singapore City

Singapore is a very green and clean city.  I took a short hour and a half tour of the city, courtesy the airport tours.  The Guide was knowledgeable and funny and very engaging. I took some pictures in the city.  Some of the sites are spectacular though. [scrollGallery id=11]

21 Jul 12 1 min read
Asia

Going Around the Singapore City

I landed in Singapore early in the morning around 7 am.  It was foggy to begin with, and after a long over 20 hours of a flight stopping in Moscow, Russia; this was a welcome stop.  I still have some hours of flying time to get to the Motherland.  But

21 Jul 12 3 min read
Africa

10 million Indians want to emigrate to US

Most people are not satisfied with where they are. They would like to move out of their present countries to “greener pastures”. It seems of all the destinations in the world, US of A is the most desired. 150 million of the world’s adults would like to move to

13 May 12 1 min read
Asia

How Western Classical Music is being kept alive by Far East

Cindy Tien-Cin WuThe American Classical music scene is a strange and interesting game of musical chairs when it comes to the audiences.  The White American audience, which predominated the classical music halls is dispropotionately older (45-54 yrs).  And as this older generation moves out due to death, disease to non-attendance

08 Feb 12 2 min read
Asia

Japan Calamity 2011: A potential Nuclear Catastrophe unfolding?

A nuclear catastrophe is potentially around the corner.  After the earthquake affected the Japanese nuclear plant, three explosions and a fire have occurred in four days.  Quite simply, the situation at Japan’s earthquake-stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant is dire.  On Tuesday there was an explosion at plant’s No.

15 Mar 11 6 min read
Asia

Earthquake and tsunami in Indonesia and the past catastrophes

Yet another earthquake of magnitude 7.7 on richter scale has hit Indonesia [http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/10/27/indonesia.quake/index.html?hpt=T1].  It was again accompanied with a Tsunami.  Over 300 people are dead and over 400 are missing. In September 2010, two earthquakes

28 Oct 10 4 min read
Prabhakaran is Dead – Violence and Ahimsa
Asia

Prabhakaran is Dead – Violence and Ahimsa

Humanity demands fairness and goodness. Even in war civility is the way for a more peaceful world. That’s what our instincts say and that is what is most ethical. However, when one goes back to history, one sees that those who were ruthless and not shy of completing a

19 May 09 3 min read
Asia

A Horror Story of the Afghan Government

Many times we do not realize the issues sitting from afar of a country.  In Afghanistan there is the threat of Taliban – which is pretty serious – but then where Taliban is not there.. there is corruption.  Corruption that is institutionalized by Hamid Karzai and his coterie and also the Western

26 Mar 09 2 min read
Asia

LTTE's capital taken over by Sri Lankan Army

Sri Lankan Army has finally entered Kilinochchi, the de-facto capital of LTTE in North East Sri lanka.  It was, however, a ghost town that was abandoned as the LTTE moved its operations further in the North East jungles. In the previous two attempts, Sri Lankan forces face still challenge and

02 Jan 09 1 min read
Asia

4 Failed States in India's neighborhood

In the latest “Failed States Index, 2008” by Foreign Policy [http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4350&page=1], four countries in our neighborhood have ended up in top 15. The list headed by Somalia, has Afghanistan as #7, and Pakistan at #9, Bangladesh and Burma are

26 Jul 08 1 min read
Asia

Nepal's Islamicisation?

China and Pakistan have carefully cultivated Nepal as their territory for last 10 years. And it has been a complete failure of India to not have anything to stop it! At the very least I would have expected the BJP government to have done something about it but even they

11 Jul 08 1 min read
Asia

Afghanistan and India relations and how they work together

I know many in Pakistan have been trying to speak negative about India.. but I came across this interview with the Afghan Ambassador [http://in.rediff.com/news/2006/feb/06inter1.htm] to India where he talks about the Indo-Afghan relations. I think the facts are self evident. Also read

10 Jul 08 2 min read
Asia

Iran test fires 9 missiles

The entire Persian belt (Iran and Iraq) is a big mess! Iran had been getting its nuke technology from AQ Khan and the North Korea (well to be precise – from CHINA).. while the US and others in the West had ostensibly no freaking idea. And then when Bush came in

09 Jul 08 2 min read
Asia

Balance of Views, Expression and Violence

The current controversy on the Prophet cartoons ceases to stop. And as it grows on around the world – more property and lives are lost. The debate on the range and intensity of response takes on a life of its own in all fora. I have been to at least two

06 Feb 06 2 min read

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