By Sagar Prasai

Sagar Prasai is The Asia Foundation’s Deputy Country Representative in Nepal. He can be reached at sagar@taf.org.np.

When the first set of results started pouring in after the April 10 polls, it looked as if the Maoists were heading for a landslide victory. But when the counting came to an end, the Maoists ended up with 240 seats, or 39.9 percent of the Constituent Assembly, followed by the Nepali Congress (NC) at 120 seats, the Communist Party of Nepal (United Marxist-Leninist) at 113 seats, Madhesi Janadhikar Forum (MJF) at 52 seats, and smaller parties taking the rest. In the 601-member Assembly, according to the Interim Constitution, a two-thirds majority is required to form a government. Now that reality is sinking in, it’s clear no single party, or even two parties combined, can produce a governing majority. As a result, Nepal’s post-election government is likely to look and feel more or less similar to its pre-election government, except on one account: the Maoists will be heading this government.
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By Thomas Parks

Thomas Parks is The Asia Foundation’s Regional Director for Conflict and Governance Programs. He is based in Bangkok and can be reached at tparks@asiafound.org. To read more about The Asia Foundation’s Programs addressing violent conflict, click here.

Ubon Ratchathani, Thailand – For more than 800 km, the muddy brown waters of the Mekong River divide Thailand and Laos. Here at Khong Jiem, the easternmost point of Thailand, the Mekong drifts slowly into Lao territory, leaving Thailand for the last leg of its journey to the South China Sea. In this remote corner of Thailand, the economic and political ties with Bangkok are relatively recent, but growing quickly. By contrast, the links with the Lao across the river are ancient. While the Mekong today divides these two places across an international border, for most of the past 600 years, it was a unifier.
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By Jeremy Gross

Jeremy Gross is The Asia Foundation’s Election Program Manager in Indonesia. He can be reached at jeremy@tafindo.org.

Historians and political scientists are long used to identifying the key ingredients in the making of revolutions - price hikes, splits in the elite, repression - all waiting for a magic trigger to unite and ignite a radical change in political systems.

Perhaps there is now a new trigger for change forcing an overhaul if not overturn of political establishments: the Internet. And, potentially the Internet can have a more powerful impact than the traditional chant and blockade style revolution, which often results in counter-revolutions, messy politics and bloodied bodies on the street.
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By V. Bruce J. Tolentino

Bruce Tolentino is The Asia Foundation’s Director for Economic Reform. He can be reached at btolentino@asiafound.org.

Widespread hunger now threatens the developing world, especially in Asia. The knee-jerk reactions of individual countries are worsening the situation. Unilateral actions by certain countries have exacerbated the problem of food price increases. Countries and economies are inextricably and unavoidably ever more linked; actions in one nation impact all.

For example, the Indian government imposed a ban on rice exports in November 2007 and took itself—the world’s second-largest exporter of rice—out of the market. This immediately set off repercussions in the countries of other major exporters—particularly Vietnam. In the last twelve months, Vietnam has experienced unprecedented inflation and suffered a slight downturn in rice production. Now, Vietnam is limiting its own exports.
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By Neil McCulloch

Neil McCulloch is Economics Program Director for The Asia Foundation in Indonesia. He can be reached at nmcculloch@tafindo.org.

In Indonesia, we’ve all heard stories about trucks being stopped by police, thugs and sometimes government officials, extracting payments, but it was hard to know the extent of the problem, exactly how much was being paid, to whom and where. The only way to do that was to ride some trucks.
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By Nilan Fernando

Nilan Fernando is The Asia Foundation’s Country Representative in Sri Lanka. He can be reached at nfernando@asiafound.org.

Amidst the escalating war between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in the north, voters in the multi-ethnic Eastern Province will vote on May 10 for a provincial council for the first time since 1988. In 1987, the Indo-Lanka Peace Accord merged the Eastern Province with the Northern Province; a referendum was to make the merger permanent but was never held. In 2006, the Supreme Court voided the merger and the two provinces were subsequently de-merged. According to the 2001 census, the ethnic composition of the Eastern Province is 45% Tamil, 32% Muslim, and 23% Sinhalese. The potential for conflict between the communities looms large if post-election power-sharing arrangements are mismanaged.
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By Karl Inderfurth

Ambassador Karl F. Inderfurth, a professor at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University, served as US assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs from 1997 to 2001. He is a Trustee of The Asia Foundation. The following is an excerpt from an op-ed he wrote at the time of the NATO summit in Bucharest (click here to view). Views expressed by individuals are their own and not endorsed by The Asia Foundation.

Afghanistan and Pakistan are inextricably linked. There can be no successful outcome for Afghanistan, if Pakistan is not a part of the solution. The future stability of both depends on developing an effective regional strategy to counter and uproot the Taliban/Al Qaeda sanctuary in Pakistan’s tribal border areas. Despite Pakistan’s counterinsurgency efforts over the last four years (or lack thereof, according to critics), the Taliban and Al Qaeda have developed a stronghold in this region that bolsters the Taliban’s capabilities against coalition forces in Afghanistan, poses a direct threat to the Pakistani state itself, and facilitates Al Qaeda planning and execution of global terrorist plots, including those directed against the United States.
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By Christopher Plante

Christopher Plante is The Asia Foundation’s Director for Environment Programs. He can be reached at cplante@asiafound.org.

Got Stoneflies? How about mayflies? Caddisflies? And midge and black flies? Do you have bugs in your water? I hope so - because after all – they are indicators of clean running waters and economic sustainability. We need them.

The presence of benthic macroinvertebrates (BMIs), such as these critters, indicates how clean our creeks, streams, and rivers are around the planet. Stoneflies, mayflies, and caddisflies have a hard time surviving in polluted waters and are known for their sensitivity to degraded water quality. Damselflies and crane flies are generally less sensitive. Midge flies can indicate polluted conditions. And black flies, where they dominate the sample collection, are indicators of moderate organic or nutrient pollution. Got good indicators?
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By Gretchen Kunze

Gretchen Kunze is The Asia Foundation’s Deputy Country Representative in Thailand and Laos. She can be reached at gkunze@asiafound.org.

The annual New York Times’ feature on hot travel destinations named Laos as number one on its list of “Places to Go in 2008.” The spotlight is now on Laos, and a recent spate of articles has been written about Lao tourism, notably Tuesday’s International Herald Tribune article by Seth Mydans and one a few weeks earlier by Denis D. Gray for Associated Press. These and other commentaries lament the cultural changes arising from the huge influx of tourists. What these changes mean for the overall development of Laos, and whether the country is ready for the rapid growth that the tourism industry is bringing, are issues receiving less attention.
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By Nick Langton

Nick Langton is The Asia Foundation’s Country Representative in Nepal. He can be reached at nick@taf.org.np.

Nepalis go to the polls on April 10th for the most important election in their nation’s history, one that will choose a 601 member Constituent Assembly to rewrite Nepal’s constitution. The election has been a long time coming, and its success is crucial to Nepal’s immediate peace and democratic future.

Beginning as an unfulfilled promise by King Tribhuvan in the 1950s, the call for a Constituent Assembly reemerged in the 1990s as one of 40 demands by the Maoist insurgents. After a decade of armed conflict, in 2006 the Maoists and the government signed a comprehensive peace agreement that included as a key feature elections to a Constituent Assembly. The government scheduled polls in June 2007, and then again in November 2007, but both times the elections were postponed due to political maneuvers and unrest. Now, on the third attempt, the election is finally going forward.

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