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The Crucial 60 Percent: Building the Commonwealth’s Youth Capital
Indian Economy | Development | Education in India | Sustainable Development | Skilling | Education Jul 17, 2023

The Crucial 60 Percent: Building the Commonwealth’s Youth Capital

Young people across the world today are facing multiple challenges: lost school years due to the pandemic-induced lockdowns, the looming climate crisis, increasingly dangerous virtual spaces, and food and energy security concerns triggered by the Ukraine-Russia conflict. This paper analyses the challenges facing the youths ...

Women’s Representation in India’s Parliament: Measuring Progress, Analysing Obstacles
Domestic Politics and Governance Jul 17, 2023

Women’s Representation in India’s Parliament: Measuring Progress, Analysing Obstacles

Women’s representation in India’s Parliament is an important metric to evaluate progress in bridging gender inequities in the country. India has a female population of 662.9 million and is the largest and one of the most resilient parliamentary democracies in the world. As the country ...

Securing Sea Lines of Communication in Asia
Maritime Security | Maritime Infrastructure Jul 17, 2023

Securing Sea Lines of Communication in Asia

The Sea Lines of Communication (SLOC) in the Indo-Pacific are a critical enabler of economic development and prosperity in the region but receive little policy attention. In an era of geopolitical contestation, with regional powers reluctant to exert military effort in preserving exclusive access in ...

Summitry as a Tool of Diplomacy: The Case of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation
China Foreign Policy | Economic Diplomacy Jul 17, 2023

Summitry as a Tool of Diplomacy: The Case of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation

As a tool of diplomacy, forum summits have allowed countries to interact, exchange views, and work together to cooperate on issues of mutual interest. This is true for the African continent, where there is a recent surge in high-level summits involving heads of state, ministers, ...

Terrorist Resources, Proclivity for Attacks, and an Effective Counterterrorism Framework
Terrorism | Cyber Security Jul 17, 2023

Terrorist Resources, Proclivity for Attacks, and an Effective Counterterrorism Framework

This paper proposes a counter-terrorism (CT) framework in terms of three types of CT policies—i.e., offensive, defensive, and confidence-building measures (CBMs)— targeted at a terror outfit that is either resource-constrained or resource-abundant. It argues that defensive measures are a ubiquitous element of CT, as these ...

A Proposed Architecture for a Central Bank Digital Currency for India
Indian Economy | Economics and Finance | Cyber Security | Economic Reforms Jul 14, 2023

A Proposed Architecture for a Central Bank Digital Currency for India

Most central banks across the globe are today seized with the idea of cryptocurrency, with countries like Sweden and China already embarking on their pilot projects. This paper argues that most of the proposed architectures for a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) are not designed ...

Increasing Cooperation for Sustainable Development: Imperatives for India’s G20 Presidency
Development | Economics and Finance | GENDER ISSUES | Sustainable Development Jun 19, 2023

Increasing Cooperation for Sustainable Development: Imperatives for India’s G20 Presidency

This paper highlights the imperatives for India’s G20 Presidency for promoting development cooperation towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Given its unique development cooperation model—more precisely, its development partnership model—India can utilise its G20 presidency to push the sustainability agenda. This will ...

Debt ad Infinitum: Pakistan’s Macroeconomic Catastrophe
Neighbourhood May 31, 2023

Debt ad Infinitum: Pakistan’s Macroeconomic Catastrophe

This paper dissects the causes behind Pakistan’s ongoing economic crisis. The causes include dwindling forex reserves, the phenomenon of ‘galloping inflation’, a falling Pakistani Rupee, uncompetitive and undiversified export basket, burgeoning external debt, lack of fiscal prudence, debt distress, and a worsening business environment—all cascading ...

The Pathway to Affordable Housing in Urban India: A Case Study of Mumbai
Urbanisation in India | Urbanisation Apr 25, 2023

The Pathway to Affordable Housing in Urban India: A Case Study of Mumbai

The affordable housing challenge plagues cities across India. Although city administrations have framed various strategies to tackle the issue, weak implementation, flawed policies, and an inherent lack of capacity to find longterm solutions have allowed slums to proliferate as an alternative. This paper examines the ...

China’s Military Modernisation: Recent Trends
International Affairs | Defence and Security | China Foreign Policy Apr 11, 2023

China’s Military Modernisation: Recent Trends

China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has undergone many changes since Xi Jinping became general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in 2013. Efforts at modernising the PLA have been conducted in earnest for the past 10 years through the overhaul of the organisation ...

Contributors

J. M. Mauskar

J. M. Mauskar

Spending more than 34 years as a Public Servant as an officer of the Indian Administrative Service he has had ’hands on’ experience of International Trade, Investment Promotion, Overseas Investments, International Contracts, Dynamics of Petroleum Sector and Environmental issues, especially ...

Read More + Preeti Kapuria

Preeti Kapuria

Preeti Kapuria was a Fellow at ORF Kolkata with research interests in the area of environment development and agriculture. The approach is to understand the linkages between biodiversity ecosystem functioning and ecosystem services and to examine how environmental governance participatory ...

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