North East - Assam/Bodo
Given the pin drop silence in international response to the abrogation of Article 370 and the status of J&K within India, I’d wondered if Modi was copying the Chinese playbook: if you criticize us, we’ll (temporarily) prevent companies from your country from doing business in our country. An NBA manager tweeted in support of Hong Kong, and China took all NBA matches off the air. An EPL footballer criticized the treatment of Uighur Muslims, and China prevented the broadcast of the match of his club, Arsenal, in China. You get the drift… And then I read this Tyler Cowen article confirming what I had suspected: “Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India is an avowed student of the Chinese experiment. Is it so far-fetched to imagine that he would help to create comparable pressures on speech for institutions doing business with India?” But it seems like there’s one area where Modi does not seem to follow the Chinese playbook: how to deal with areas that want to secede. The ...