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This is the first time Indian forces have challenged Chinese claims on Bhutanese territory.

Across the globe, more than 730 million women report ever having experienced some form of gender-based violence; those in low- and lower-middle-income countries are disproportionately affected. In the past two years, the COVID-19 pandemic has only increased the incidence of violence suffered by women in the hands of their intimate partners, owing to heightened stresses of loss of livelihood, disruption of social and protective networks, a

The United States (US) is recalibrating its strategy in the Indian Ocean, driven by the region’s rapidly evolving geopolitical and geostrategic landscape. The US approach has moved from unilateral dominance to a more collaborative strategy that emphasises shared leadership through a technology-driven security paradigm. This paradigm supports a rule-based order where regional stakeholders are empowered to adopt more significant roles. The founda

New Delhi's bid to counter the One Belt One Road by creating transportation linkages through the Iranian ports, is at stake.

No one believes that India would wipe out Lahore, if Pakistan used a low yield nuclear weapon against an Indian military formation, and that, too, in Pakistan.

The benefits of strengthening physical connectivity in a geographically contiguous region are increasingly being recognised. These links are expected to increase economic activity and people-to-people interaction, leading in turn to regional and sub-regional integration. In this backdrop, the Motor Vehicle Agreement (MVA) signed among Bangladesh, Bhutan, India and Nepal is expected to facilitate cross-border movement of vehicles, thereby reducing

India has assumed the G20 presidency at a critical and opportune time in history, even as the half-yearly report card indicates that consensus-building in the grouping has been more difficult than India may have expected. This brief identifies six areas where India can manifest its capability to lead the building of an effective and plausible climate action plan. Globally, championing the tracking of per-capita emissions and fossil fuel-b

This paper explores the ways in which UAVs are increasingly integrating themselves in civilian life, outlines the policy implications of this rapid proliferation, and identifies specific policy blind spots India must address.

Technology affects us in positive ways yet can also be disruptive; such is the case with Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA or more commonly known as drones). While drones are proving to be useful for military, commercial, civilian, and even humanitarian activities, their unregulated use carries serious consequences that need to be addressed. This paper examines drone operations in India and analyses the major policy gaps in the country’s evolving

Mark Lynas is right. Completely divorced from research and data Indian activism today is a cesspool of myths and misconceptions

The navy has been undertaking anti-piracy operations in the region with significantly greater purpose than at any time since 2008

The Indian industrial sector has slowed down and reviving it is an immense challenge, given problems in the availability of power. Many states across the country have been facing daily power cuts of upto six hours; the situation is only worsening despite measures being taken by the government such as sprucing up coal supplies.

The Indian diaspora in the US has been instrumental in deepening and strengthening India-US relations and will continue to do so in the future, says State Senator Ellen Roberts from Colorado Legislature and Minnesota State Representative Paul Thissen.

India has to increase the confidence of the Foreign Portfolio Investors who have been withdrawing from the Indian stock market in droves.

This brief discusses the education component of cooperation between India and the countries of the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC). It argues that nurturing the education link within BIMSTEC can play a transformative role in augmenting people-to-people contact and cementing a more fruitful regional connectivity. While progress has been achieved—to which India has contributed considerably�

Egypt and India have long had good relations with each other. Over the last few years, however, both nations have tended to be preoccupied elsewhere and their bilateral relationship has been left untended.

India’s 73rd Constitutional Amendment Act, which empowered local self-governments (Panchayati Raj Institutions) and reserved one-third of electoral seats in these bodies for women, has elevated women’s participation in rural governance. India is among the foremost countries for women’s participation in local governments, with over 1.45 million women shaping local decision-making. Women leaders are a critical link between local governance, s

In recent years, more governments have been giving greater attention to developing their countries’ electric vehicles (EV) sector as a strategy for minimising the harm that mass transportation can cause to human health and the environment. This paper tells the story of India’s EV initiative. It offers an overview of the national mission to push the manufacture and adoption of EVs; appraises the policies introduced by governments of select sta

Cyber Warfare (CW) and Electronic Warfare (EW) are crucial to combat in modern warfare. Both are products of Signals Intelligence and constitute one part of Information Warfare (IW) and what is known as Network Centric Warfare (NCW). This paper explores how the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of China and the Indian Army (IA) have approached CW and EW. Both the PLA and the IA acknowledge NCW as doctrinally important. Organisationally and in Comm

India and the countries of Africa share common challenges in their education systems, among them, weak teacher capacities and lack of basic infrastructure. In India, technological interventions have been able to address some of the challenges at scale. Africa has met with less success in this regard, as governments prioritise the provision of hardware without addressing the systemic issues that hamper the adoption of such technologies. Cu

As part of a three-year research project undertaken by ORF and PRIO to study and analyse urban governance, urban security and environment related trends and concerns in selected regions of India, an international conference was organised on "Emerging Challenges in an Urbanising India: Governance, Security and Climate Change".

While the idea that emotional appeal is central to political persuasion may serve common intuition, the dynamics underscoring how and why this is so, remain underexplored. This primer collates insights from neuroscience and political psychology to show why emotions are essential to vote choice. It explores the effects of emotional appeals on voter perceptions using examples from campaign advertisements in US elections. The analysis finds that pol

In the Indian context, the term, ‘Special Operations Forces’ (SOF) refers to all those forces that are especially selected, organised, trained and equipped for tasks that have an impact at the strategic level and are beyond the remit of conventional forces. India’s uncoordinated response to the January 2016 terrorist attacks on the 1 Pathankot Air Force base has again trained the spotlight on the issues of tasking, synergy and ‘jointnes

India needs to act now by enhancing its programme effectiveness and reach.

A talk by Prof Dilip Ahuja and Prof D P Sen Gupta

To meet its poverty eradication, human and economic development targets, India will require much greater availability of energy. Poverty eradication is critical for building resilience to potential climate impacts.

The increasing demand for mobility and the rising rates of motorisation in India have substantially increased energy consumption and carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions from the road transport sector. As of 2021, road transport was responsible for 14 percent of the nation’s total energy consumption, 92 percent of transport-related energy demand, and 94 percent of transport-related CO₂ emissions. In 2021, India committed to net-zero carbon emissi

The importance of today's Africa for India is self-evident. India's ambitions of being a global power cannot be achieved without the support of the African continent consisting of 55 countries. Nowhere is the importance of African countries felt more than on the issue of the expansion of the UN Security Council.

Mainstreaming gender in urbanisation can be a useful tool in understanding and tackling exclusionary growth and access to resources in urban spaces more generally.

India and Pakistan can reap multiple benefits from an enhanced cooperation on the economic and energy fronts, according to experts at a recent conference at Observer Research Foundation.

This brief discusses the challenges faced by urban local bodies (ULBs) in India in accessing urban climate finance (UCF), and proposes solutions based on successful strategies used by some of them. The hurdles include institutional barriers and limited capacity. The brief finds that ULBs that have met with success in accessing UCF overcame the obstacles through early sensitisation programmes and global network connections. It offers plausible sol

The strategic location of India’s North Eastern Region (NER) offers ample opportunities for enhancing the country’s economic ties. However, supply-chain constraints at the regional level hamper the trade-growth linkages, as do trade barriers, social unrest, and inadequate infrastructure. Enhancing and improving commercial exchanges with neighbouring countries, such as Bangladesh and Myanmar, will strengthen bilateral and regional networks. Th

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 delivery systems in the countries are encumbered by the poor implementation of regulatory policies, if they are in place at all. East A