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With much fanfare, Indian Prime Minister Modi's trip to the United States came to a close September 30. However, beyond catchy slogans, are current Indo-US space cooperative initiatives living up to their full potential? Will space help India and the U.S. move forward together for a better world?

Nearly 20 million people in Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, and Yemen are facing what has been described as the largest food crisis in the world in 70 years. Conflict is the main reason behind these famines, abetted by drought, climate change, poverty, and the existing vulnerability of the people in these countries. Security issues have led to a dramatic decline in agricultural production and have adversely affected the supply and distribution of

In all the hype and hyperbole about what to do with coal blocks, the plain fact is that the real danger lies in our coal reserves turning valueless for the country, of no benefit to the owner - the people of the land. They will be value less if we don't extract them before they turn un-burnable by climate action a few decades from now.

I have no problem with military officers running a nation as long as they are out of uniform and have won the mandate to do so. But when a military officer ousts a legitimate civilian government, refuses to shed his uniform and abuses the basic democratic right of franchise, there is a reason for the civilized world to be alarmed and ashamed. Such men are a blot on the democratic, civilized world.

On August 12, 2016 the Observer Research Foundation convened the first in a series of multistakeholder roundtables on encryption. This report is the outcome of the discussion of issues and proposal of solutions conducted at the roundtable. Being a complex, technical-legal question around access to data for law enforcement, encryption has long been a contested issue. Creating best-in-class regulation on encryption will require targeted interventio

It would be worth France, India, and Japan beginning an institutionalised and wide-ranging dialogue to ensure that the three of them can better coordinate their activities in the Indo-Pacific — not necessarily to counter China, but to encourage it to cooperate.

In this digital age, how free speech is dealt with in a multipolar world, and the emergence of the new and complex forms of censorship were discussed in a talk on "Rethinking Media Freedom in the Digital Age" at the Observer Research Foundation.

India pulled out of the planned Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) in 2018 after entering negotiations in 2013. India has a trade deficit with 11 out of the 15 RCEP countries and some analysts have theorised that India decided to opt out of the agreement because of such adverse trade balance.  Indeed, India has a trade deficit with most of its trade partners in past free trade agreements (FTAs). It is in this context that this br

The quotas in textiles, enforced under the Multi Fibre Agreement (MFA) which was signed in 1994, are going to be lifted on December 31, 2004 and the trade in textiles would come under the WTO directly. It means that all forms of protectionism applied to textile industries the world over, would have to go.

The COP21 was at the heart of the conversation on July 28 at the French Embassy in India, where the fifth in a monthly series of talks leading up to the Paris conference was held in partnership with Observer Research Foundation.

Should the story of the French in Syrian custody become public in France, the voters will ask: did the government sanction illegal entry of our soldiers into foreign countries? Is the Syrian rebellion an imported rebellion?

If the ISIS is not brought under control, the chances are that it could spread to Pakistan, especially Waziristan, a tribal region which plays host to most terror outfits. This could in turn affect India by means of border infiltrations.

The Taliban, ably helped by Pakistan, the US’s frontline ally in its global war on terror, has badly dented the notion of US invincibility. Despite President Joe Biden’s efforts in recent months to reassure allies that “America is back”, there is a wariness about both US commitment and its competence.

China remains a superpower in the making but its journey has now become profoundly more difficult

This paper evaluates deficiencies in India’s naval shipbuilding programme, and identifies factors that adversely impact naval warship construction in the country. It argues that despite considerable effort, India’s shipbuilding endeavours continue to suffer from systemic deficits that cannot be addressed through ad hoc policy interventions and short-term solutions. Through an assessment of strengths and weaknesses of India’s defence shipyar

The Rohingyas are among the world’s most persecuted communities, who, until a mass exodus in 2017, mainly resided in Myanmar’s Rakhine State. In 2017, about 712,179 Rohingyas made their way to Bangladesh, taking the total number of Rohingya refugees in that country to 855,000.[1]The overcrowding caused by this influx at the Cox’s Bazar refugee camps has led the Bangladesh government to consider temporarily relocating the Rohingya refugees t

The Vice-President of Maldives, in his address to the ORF faculty, recounts the long and bitter-sweet struggle against autocratic rule in his country. With an elected government now at the helm and democracy gradually taking roots in different spheres of society, he outlines the crucial challenges that lie ahead for the island nation.

If there is one thing on which all the ¿Dravidian parties¿ of Tamil Nadu stand united today, it is their criticism of the Union budget, presented by fellow Tamil leader Palaniappan Chidambaram. In doing so the DMK, the PMK and the MDMK, allies of the Congress at the Centre, have restricted their criticism to the proposed tax on the daily withdrawal of money from one¿s own bank account.

Beginning in 2017, the first Trump Administration steered United States (US)-China relations from engagement to competition. Thereafter, Biden largely built on this policy, while giving indications of moving towards a phase of “competitive co-existence”. Under Biden, the US sought to reassure China that it was adopting a strategy of “de-risking” and not “de-coupling,” and its goal was to adopt a technology export regime that would als

Cities across the globe are increasingly using materials such as concrete, which store more thermal energy than natural materials and absorb sunlight rather than reflecting it, warming their surroundings. This ‘urban heat island’ (UHI) effect has consequences on health, ranging from heat exhaustion to cerebrovascular events and circulatory failures resulting in death. Compounding the challenge is that the impact of extreme heat on health is u

Most leading air forces around the world were quick to learn from the experiences of the US Air Force between the Vietnam War in the 1960s and the Gulf War three decades later. This resulted in the widespread adoption by these forces of Precision Guided Munitions (PGMs) beginning in the mid-1990s. Only a few of these air arms, however, have matched the overall effectiveness of US air power, which combines aircraft survivability with weapon range,

Eighty-eight innocent civilians, about 60 of them Egyptians, and the remaining believed to be foreign tourists, were killed in three well-synchronised explosions by unidentified terrorist elements at the Red Sea resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt on July 23,2005.The city is a popular tourist resort on the Red Sea at the tip of the Sinai Peninsula.

Despite sharing a close historical relationship based on the Soviet Union’s support during the 1971 Liberation War, Bangladesh had for long been out of the scope of Russia’s foreign policy priorities. This is best exemplified by the fact that no Soviet/Russian foreign minister had visited the country until September 2023. However, amid Western sanctions due to its war in Ukraine and tensions with the US, Russia is seeking to reinvigorate ties

This paper analyses India’s participation in more than two decades of global climate politics. India has transitioned from a protest voice on the fringes of global climate policy to one that is actively shaping international efforts to combat climate change. Analysis of the drivers behind India’s negotiating positions on climate change thus far has focused on the competing motives of equity and co-benefits, which has however been insufficient

Climate adaptation has been at the forefront of UN climate negotiations over the past decade, given the increasing frequency of extreme weather events at the global, national, and sub-national levels. Climate vulnerability and risk assessments (VRA) are essential for adaptation planning, as they help identify areas, populations, and systems that are most at-risk from the impacts of climate change. They can also be used as a tool to develop adapta

Underlying all practical steps between India and France is a shared strategic vision, particularly driven by the strategic uncertainties around China’s rise and its growing assertiveness.

As global food production faces the negative consequences of climate change, best practices in climate-smart agriculture (CSA) must be promoted to achieve food security. This requires adequate financial and human resources to be channeled to the upscaling of CSA activities in high-impact, priority areas. Considering India and Africa’s complementary sectoral priorities and their similar roles in evolving global food markets, various opportunitie

A year and a half since United States (US) President Joe Biden took the helm, both sides of the country’s political divide continue to debate whether the incumbent’s China policy is distinct from that of the Trump administration. The Republicans claim that Biden’s China policy has not veered away from Trump’s; the Democrats, meanwhile, argue that it is different. This brief weighs in on the debate, and finds that despite the Biden

Angola is rich in natural wealth, with massive petroleum and diamond deposits across its territory. Most of its people, however, continue to live in poverty. Since its independence in 1975, Angola has had a tumultuous journey: from being a war zone, to becoming a poster child for Chinese engagement in the continent, and since 2015, declining to its current state where the challenges are so massive—negative growth rates, high external debt, risi

India’s engagement with Southeast Asia entered a new phase following Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s third consecutive electoral victory in June 2024. With the ‘Act East’ policy too, marking its 10th anniversary in 2024, New Delhi has intensified its regional outreach through an unprecedented series of high-level diplomatic exchanges, security partnerships, and strategic dialogues. This brief examines how this surge in engagement is both a

After President Donald Trump’s 2017 visit to Asia, the Indo-Pacific region assumed greater significance in the United States’ foreign policy calculus, as articulated in the ‘Indo-Pacific Strategy Report’ released by the US Department of Defence. On 31 December 2018, Trump passed the Asia Reassurance Initiative Act (ARIA), which authorises US$1.5 billion in spending for a range of US programmes in East Asia and Southeast Asia to “develop

There is an increasing realisation amongst the media community in Pakistan that their State had been actively involved in training India-centric terrorist groups within Pakistani borders, said a delegation of Urdu journalists from Pakistan who visited ORF.

This Issue Brief seeks to provide inputs for further discussion to gain from potential windfall opportunities that might arise for India's natural gas industry as well as lay the requisite foundation for a future plan.

Mr L V Krishnan, a Nuclear Scientist who had worked with the Department of Atomic Energy, Government of India, gave a presentation on the 'Future of Nuclear Weapons', at an Interaction in the ORF Chennai Chapter of the Observer Research Foundation on 29 December 2007.

International jihadi terrorism of the Al Qaeda model will continue to pose the most serious challenge to the intelligence and counter-terrorism agencies and the police forces of the world in the short and medium terms, that is, for another five to 10 years. It shows no signs of any dilution of motivation and determination.

G-20 is an important forum to ensure world economic stability in a world of changing power dynamics and it is imperative that member states use it so, says First Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade of the Republic of Korea Ahn Ho-Young.

For India, which is also experiencing declining growth rates in the last couple of years, the priority at the forthcoming G-20 summit at St Petersberg would be issues including the spillover of the global slowdown on emerging economies as well as quota reforms of the International Monetary Fund.

The agenda hosts Turkey has set for the G20 summit is undoubtedly overloaded. But, to achieve good results, it would make sense for global leaders to focus on the most pressing regional issues affecting the global economy in general and Asia in particular, before the next summit in China in 2016.

पंतप्रधान नरेंद्र मोदी यांच्यासमोरील कार्य स्पष्ट आहे: विकास परत आणण्यासाठी जगाला सुरक्षित करा. यासाठी ते G20 च्या आत आणि बाहेर आंतरराष्ट्रीय सहमती निर्माण करत आहेत.

आपल्या G20 अध्यक्षपदाच्या काळात, भारताने सरकार आणि धोरणकर्त्यांशी संवाद साधला पाहिजे आणि या क्षेत्राला चालना देण्यासाठी या क्षेत्राला भेडसावणाऱ्या नियामक अडचणी दूर केल�

आने वाले वर्षों में जलवायु परिवर्तन के चलते होने वाली विनाशकारी घटनाओं से व्यापक रूप से बड़े पैमाने पर जनसंख्या का विस्थापन होगा. इस समस्या का विस्तार देशों की सरहदों के आ�

घटत्या कामगार शक्तींचा प्रभाव कमी करण्यासाठी स्थलांतरित हा एक महत्त्वाचा उपाय असू शकतो आणि G20 देशांसाठी दीर्घकालीन नफ्यात योगदान देऊ शकतो.

हे तथ्य पत्रक G20 देशांच्या संरक्षण खर्च आणि संरक्षण निर्यातीचे स्पष्टीकरण देते.

G20 देशों के पास जो ख़रीद शक्ति है वह उभरते हुए बाज़ारों को लो-कार्बन प्रोडक्ट्‌स अपनाने और उसमें इज़ाफ़ा करने में सहायक साबित हो सकती है. इसी शक्ति के दम पर निवेशकों के बीच नियामक

G20 देशों में स्थित छोटे द्वीपों को अलगाव, सीमित संसाधनों के साथ ही साफ तौर पर जलवायु परिवर्तन एवं प्राकृतिक आपदाओं से संबंधित विभिन्न प्रकार की विशिष्ट चुनौतियों का सामना �

१९९० पासून जगभरात जी आर्थिक प्रगती झाली आहे, ती चाके कोरोना महामारीमुळे पुन्हा एकदा उलटी फिरतील, अशीच जागतिक परिस्थिती सध्यातरी दिसते आहे.