India did not produce Horatio Alger, but it certainly has produced a Horatio-Alger story: Narendra Modi. Yesterday the son of a poor tea seller took the oath of office as India’s fourteenth (or fifte…

On Saturday, November 9, Maldivians will return to the polls, again, to vote for president. But instead of being an occasion for celebration of democratic consolidation following a difficult year and…

There have been a lot of elections in South Asia in recent days. On November 16 a run-off election produced a surprise result in Maldives, where Abdulla Yameen—the half-brother of former President Ga…

Over the past week, the Indian media and social media have been seized with an unfolding scandal involving a news magazine, Tehelka, that made its reputation ferreting out truth and exposing wrongdoi…

The results of four of the five state-level elections conducted in India over the past month were announced on Sunday, December 8. (Results from the smaller northeastern state of Mizoram were announc…