India

The recent local elections in India and the upcoming general electionhave opened up for speculation and debate on the role of smaller state-based regional parties. This article analyses how regionalism shapes India's political system.

The “rise” of regional political parties seems to be an eternal theme on the Indian political scene. The exponential increase in the number of parties contesting elections, particularly over the past two decades, and the shrinking margins of victory in parliamentary elections are direct results of the emergence of new regional power centers.

Emerged from an anti-corruption movement, the Aam Aadmi Party has made a spectacular entrance into Indian politics and challenged the rules of Indian politics.

In the late spring or the early summer of 2014 India will conduct its sixteenth general election. The battle lines between the two principal, national political parties, the Indian National Congress (INC) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), are now being drawn.

The Supreme Court of India overturned a historic ruling of 2009 by the Delhi High Court, which legalised homosexual intercourse for the first time in India. But there is still a glimpse of hope.

For three years, Pakistan has single-handedly – and successfully – blocked the Conference on Disarmament (CD) in Geneva from discussing an effort that would put a cap on fissile materials.

The European Union (EU) and the Government of India are currently negotiating a bilateral Free Trade Agreement (FTA) that aims to liberalise 'substantially all trade' between the two trading blocks. This study assesses the possible impact of an FTA between India and the EU on the Human Right to Food in India.

After Germany lost World War II it had to acknowledge that it is a middle power that cannot dominate Europe. It therefore focused on rebuilding relations with former enemies through confidence building measures, economic cooperation and total restraint from military adventurism. Could this strategy be a role model for India and Pakistan as well?

Very recently, an Indian peace delegation visited Pakistan from 17-26th March 2011, primarily to see the dialogue between the two countries become a reality. The delegation included activists, intellectuals, writers, artists, educationists, politicians and parliamentarians.

The main objective of this paper is to explore the interrelationship between the Naxalite conflict and the Indian state. To what extent is the state responsible for the root causes of this conflict and to what extent does the conflict affect the state itself? 

Heinrich Böll Stiftung supports a joint seminar of Indian and Pakistani experts on "Climate Change and Energy Security: Cooperation between Pakistan and India"

Ms Binalakshmi Nepram, Founder of Manipur Women Gun Survivors Network and Secretary General of Control Arms Foundation of India has been conferred the Sean MacBride Peace Prize for the year 2010.

The Armed Forces Special Powers Bill was passed by both the Houses of Parliament and it received the assent of the President on 11th September, 1958. On 8th September 2010 guests and resource persons from different organisations, the armed forces and men and women from all over India working on peace and conflict issues, discussed ideas and visions of peace building and the highly controversial and sensitive topic of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA). Find out more about the conference on the website of our office in New Delhi (India).

The publication is an edited collection of short essays by Indian authors on economic structures, relations and principles that are needed to serve the goals of sustainable economic and human development, poverty eradication, social justice, and empowerment of the most vulnerable segments of society: women.

Distrust, suspicion and hostility has kept relations between India and Pakistan simmering even in the best of times. In the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks in November 2008, the so far made progress in the bilateral peace process came to a complete standstill. An initiative to bring the dialogue back on track was started by civil society, conducting a three day conference in New Delhi, co-organized by Heinrich-Böll-Foundation.

An interview with Sunita Narain, director of the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), on India's climate policy and its international and national context.

The bulk of the media and parts of the intelligentsia, after first coming to terms with the Congress Party system, now prefer the two multiparty coalition systems: the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) or the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), even when the UPA is only going in for post-poll alliances with its erstwhile colleagues. The one thing that worries the media is a Third Front.

Despite the hopes of a bi-nodal party system since 1998, a secular alternative, reduced from being the second option in 1977 to the Third Front within a decade, has not ceased to linger in the background. It remains a parking space for satraps in search of greater role in national politics than their regional space would afford them.

After the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks many expected the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to benefit in the general elections. This was based on both the party’s emphasis on security and on the assumption that the attack would stir up anti-Muslim sentiments.

Some of the Offices of of the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Asia describe their work in the following short films.