At a time when a progressive patina is being painted over the rule of Chief Minister Narendra Modi, a reporter visiting Gujarat four years and six months after the pogroms finds a state where Muslims are being thrust forcibly into ghettos. The trauma of the butchery is as raw as ever. The active participation of the Hindu middle class in Modi’s agenda, and the silence of the few who think otherwise, will guarantee the social and moral poverty of all Gujarat, even as it secedes from the rest of Indian society. Meanwhile, the wilful turn of the communal wheel will deliver radicalised militants and, thereby, a further marginalisation of Muslims. The Gujarat of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi has become unrecognisable. Nothing short of a massive social movement is required to cleanse the state of Gujarat.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, the eastern Himalayan region was a hotbed of conflict as the indigenous communities pitched themselves against Tibetan Buddhist and Gorkhali hegemony. Hitherto unstudied manuscripts afford a new understanding of these rivalries, and of the life and work of a man who laid the ground for a Kirant revival.

With the advent of budget airlines, air travel in India has transformed beyond recognition. The extension of low-cost air routes across Southasian frontiers has become a tantalising possibility.

As international patent standards come into force in India, its widely hailed pharmaceutical industry is facing turbulence that will likely dramatically raise the price of medicine, at least for the short term.

Trivialisation of news in India’s national English-language press hides larger trends that are overtaking the media world – taking news to the villages.

The interim government in Kathmandu risks becoming a mere caretaker administration in the absence of concrete movement towards a constituent assembly through the adoption of an interim constitution.

People-to-people contacts between India and Pakistan will mean nothing if commerce does not pick up. An appreciation of Indo-Pakistani prospects requires looking at Punjab-Punjab.

Aircraft hijackings took place for a long time in India without anyone pointing the finger to ‘Islamic fundamentalism’. The tendency to see the world through the eyes of George W Bush will always lead us away from the true nature of extremism.

The killing of Nawab Akbar Bugti should be enough to tell the rest of Southasia and the world how Islamabad’s military rulers intend to maintain their grip on the resource-rich and long-suffering province of Balochistan.

Making India’s extensive regional borders ‘progressively irrelevant’ will not be easy, but it is necessary.

Singer and rebel Bant Singh has inspired a new empowerment movement of Dalits and landless farmers in Punjab – and the state’s feudal remnants have taken notice.