Globalisation and Transformation

While Russia is redrawing the European map, Ukraine needs to move forward: A hybrid war cannot be ended with a hybrid peace and an economic crisis cannot be overcome with hybrid reforms. Changes have to be fast and radical.

On 2 February, Angela Merkel flew to Budapest to spend five hours in the Hungarian capital. This seemingly routine and uneventful flash visit was nonetheless much anticipated on the Hungarian side.

Newly elected Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi used the margins of the U.N. General Assembly in September to make his first official visit to the United States. On January 26, US President Barack Obama will visit India.

It is not only constitutional democracy that Viktor Orbán’s regime treats as its enemy; the Hungarian government has also launched a forceful attack on the welfare state. A concise overview of the latest reforms - and an assess of their consequences for poverty and social inequality.

The Hungarian tax authority scandal is complicated and mysterious. One thing is clear, however: Fidesz came into conflict with the Obama administration – which took more effective action than the European Union against a corrupt and Russia-oriented government.

India's prime minister Modi tries to develop relations with important countries: In Japan, he marketed India as a ‘low cost manufacturing hub’ and tries to inject new life to U.S.-India relations.

Development projects and construction work around military bases make up an overwhelmingly large part of Afghanistan’s economy. With foreign troops withdrawing and declining aid, the country is looking for its future economic path.

For the first time in the last 17 years an Indian Prime Minister has visited Nepal. Modi's challenge is to nudge the country on the path of stability and development without sounding ‘big brotherly’, says Avani Tewari in her blog.

Azerbaijani human rights activist Leyla Yunus has been arrested in Baku. The regime’s savage crackdown on press and opposition started long before the presidential elections of 2013.

It was eagerly anticipated, if the maiden budget of the newly elected Modi government could steer the Indian economy from the morass where it had been deposited by the previous government. Unfortunately, it is nothing more than a solid middle of the road budget, says Awani Tevari.