In Asia: Weekly Insight and Features from Asia

One year ago in this blog, Asia Foundation chief economist Bruce Tolentino expressed “cautious optimism” about the prospects for global recovery and Asian growth in 2010. His positive prediction for Asia was more than fulfilled, in spite of a dispiriting lag in U.S. recovery and severe economic crises in the Eurozone. In 2010, Asia’s diverse [...]

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South Asia has seen remarkable economic growth since the 1980s, when the region began to adopt pro-growth policies such as foreign investment liberalization, privatization, and the dismantling of onerous business regulations. Since the mid-1980s, South Asia experienced an average annual growth rate of 5.6 percent in its per capita Gross National Income (GNI). As a [...]

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International climate negotiations began this week in Cancun, Mexico, with little fanfare or expectation of reaching a binding agreement on reducing rising global temperatures. The Cancun Summit builds on last year’s disappointing but massive Copenhagen climate talks in Denmark. Since then, governments have done little to follow through on their pledges to reduce greenhouse gases [...]

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On a hot morning in early October, 25 local community members, police officials, and Grama Niladharis (village heads) crowded into the local conference room to discuss eight recent cases of crime and conflict concerning the community of Gampola in central Sri Lanka. These women and men, young and old, gathered for Gampola’s monthly community policing [...]

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Sri Lanka’s violent civil war that stretched over 25 years left thousands killed, and caused lasting emotional and economic hardship across the island. Although the war ended in May 2009, private businesses in the Northern and Eastern Provinces, their growth shackled by years of armed conflict, are now struggling to catch up. The North and [...]

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The dust has settled from two general elections in Sri Lanka this year. In the presidential election on January 26, incumbent President Mahinda Rajapaksa from the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) defeated former army commander Sarath Fonseka, who was the common candidate put forward by opposition parties including the United National Party (UNP), Sri Lanka’s [...]

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Conflict and fragile governance present enormous challenges for development and security in Asia. In places where violence is widespread and government ceases to function, the pace of development falls dramatically and conditions can deteriorate to extreme levels. Conflicts often include disaffected minorities or marginalized populations at odds with the central government and political establishment. Other [...]

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Special to In Asia A constable, his uniform freshly pressed, sits elbow to elbow with more than a dozen local residents in a loud, airless office in Pussellawa, a high-altitude hamlet nestled among the tea plantations of central Sri Lanka’s diverse Kandy district. “We’re limited,” he says. “The area we have to cover is big. [...]

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There is an instant before the start of a large event when, with logistical arrangements set and the agenda fine tuned, attention shifts to participants. One draws a breath and wonders what the chemistry of personalities, perspectives, and experience will yield. So I reflected at the start of last week’s regional conference on the role [...]

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Upon their return from the Leaders of Influence (LOI) regional conference in Dhaka March 21-24 that convened over 80 participants from 14 countries, In Asia spoke with Rosita MacDonald, program officer for The Asia Foundation’s Governance, Law, and Civil Society program, and Russell Pepe, chief of party for the LOI program in Bangladesh, on what [...]

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