Recent Updates

Ensuring access to medicines in East Africa: Lessons from India
Healthcare Jul 03, 2019

Ensuring access to medicines in East Africa: Lessons from India

Africa faces various challenges in ensuring equitable access to life-saving drugs. Drug prices in the continent are largely unregulated, making locally produced drugs more expensive than the imported ones. The African countries thus rely heavily on imports to meet their pharmaceutical needs. Further, the medicine ...

Mega-ships in the Indian Ocean: Evaluating the impact and exploring littoral cooperation
Maritime Infrastructure Jun 22, 2019

Mega-ships in the Indian Ocean: Evaluating the impact and exploring littoral cooperation

The Indian Ocean has seen a steady increase in the size and number of Ultra Large Container Vessels (ULCVs) or mega-ships equal to or in excess of 18,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU) from 2014 onwards. This has created economic and infrastructural pressures on Indian Ocean littorals. ...

Half a century of India’s Maoist insurgency: An appraisal of state response
Domestic Politics and Governance | Internal Security Jun 13, 2019

Half a century of India’s Maoist insurgency: An appraisal of state response

In 2006, then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh named  Maoist insurgency as “the single biggest internal-security challenge”[i] the country has ever faced. He would repeat the same warning in the succeeding four years.[ii] This paper argues  that today, the insurgency no longer poses the same degree of threat ...

Health systems in the BIMSTEC and East Africa: Current and future engagements
Neighbourhood | Healthcare | Sustainable Development Jun 12, 2019

Health systems in the BIMSTEC and East Africa: Current and future engagements

The BIMSTEC and East Africa, which together account for 25 percent of the world’s population, are low-resource regions.[1] While their share in the global disease burden is disproportionately high, their combined healthcare expenditure is a minuscule share of the global healthcare spend. Their health systems are ...

India’s urban moment: The pressing need for a new thought architecture
Development | Urbanisation in India | Urbanisation | Transportation | Sanitation Jun 06, 2019

India’s urban moment: The pressing need for a new thought architecture

India’s emerging urban moment is caught between two realities: inadequate systems in public transportation, housing, waste management, and access to sanitation and health; and a burgeoning ecosystem of enterprising individuals, communities and start-ups pushing innovative solutions to these very same civic issues. This paper examines ...

India and CLMV countries: Investments, development cooperation and sustainable development
International Affairs | Economic Diplomacy | Sustainable Development Jun 04, 2019

India and CLMV countries: Investments, development cooperation and sustainable development

India shares close political and strategic ties with the Southeast Asian subregion of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam (or the CLMV countries). However, their economic ties remain weak, owing to various factors including lack of physical connectivity, as well as the absence of synergy between ...

China and Europe: Trade, technology and competition
Great Power Dynamics May 22, 2019

China and Europe: Trade, technology and competition

Over the last five years, Brexit, the victory of Donald Trump in the US and the assumption of power by Xi Jinping in China, the seizure of Crimea and the Ukrainian crisis, the South China Sea disputes, and the emerging Iran crisis, have all helped ...

Weighed down by the gains: India’s twin double burdens of malnutrition and disease
Healthcare | Sustainable Development May 21, 2019

Weighed down by the gains: India’s twin double burdens of malnutrition and disease

Given its continent-like diversity, India’s epidemiological, nutritional, and demographic transitions are occurring in a staggered fashion, with high state-level variances. In many parts of the country, high rates of undernutrition co-exist with equally high and increasing rates of overweight and obesity. Further, the incidence of ...

Contributors

Soumya Bhowmick

Soumya Bhowmick

Soumya Bhowmick is a Fellow and Lead, World Economies and Sustainability at the Centre for New Economic Diplomacy (CNED) at Observer Research Foundation (ORF). He is pursuing his PhD and holds a double master’s degree in economics from Jadavpur University, ...

Read More + Sreeparna Banerjee

Sreeparna Banerjee

Sreeparna Banerjee is an Associate Fellow in the Strategic Studies Programme. Her work focuses on the geopolitical and strategic affairs concerning two Southeast Asian countries, namely Myanmar and Thailand. Her primary focus is on the Rohingya issue within the Bay of ...

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