The future is not looking good for the thousands of displaced Rohingyas. Last year, close to 600,000 escaped the pogrom unleashed by the Myanmar army aided by machete wielding Buddhist neighbors and escaped to Bangladesh swelling the numbers already there.
| Tyger, tyger, burning bright | |
| In the forests of the night, | |
| What immortal hand or eye | |
| Could frame thy fearful symmetry? |
A few years back, I had written an article on our family trip to Ranthambhore, India, in the hope of seeing a tiger. I decided to write this post on the same topic but with a different emphasis. Recently I came across data on the alarming decline in the tiger population in India, mainly from poaching. This is fueled by the insatiable demand for tiger body parts, mainly in China. Can we sit back and allow this magnificent beast immortalized in the famous poem by William Blake, the first verse of which is quoted above, to simply disappear from the earth? Certainly not. In this post I describe the awe and joy I felt coming face to face with a tiger in the wild.
We cannot enter into alliances until we are acquainted with the designs of our neighbors: Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Chabahar and Gwadar are two ports separated by just 72 kilometers, but worlds away in terms of geo-strategy. But let us go back a few decades when India and Pakistan won independence from Great Britain. In the immediate aftermath, Pakistan grabbed a large slice of western Kashmir from India. Three wars were fought between these two countries where India got the upper hand including the liberation of East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. This left a deep distrust and a desire for revenge in the Pakistani psyche. In 1962, India and China went to war over disputed borders in Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh. China got the upper hand.
From the 90s, improved economic policies and the desire to do better saw an explosion in the economies and living standards of the citizens of China and India. And with an improved economy and living standards, came the desire for more, hence the need to look for more resources, including energy resources (read oil), raw materials and safe shipping lanes to get these resources to the homeland.
Ranjan's Writings 