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His Excellency's address to the ORF Faculty delivered on May 3, 2012.

Senator Chris Evans visited the Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi on July 22 and spoke on the close cultural ties that have been forged between the two countries, the safety of Indian students in Australia and migration prospects in the future.

When the rest of the world was kept in a state of shivering suspense by North Korea's nuclear and missile threats, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard quietly undertook an important visit to China -- her second official visit to Beijing in about two years.

Australia would be holding a skills Expo in India next year which would inform prospective migrants about the employment and lifestyle opportunities available in Australia

Underlining the need to develop an India-US-Australia trilateral, Mr. Rory Medcalf of the Lowy Institute says the recent US pivot to Asia is an opportunity for this relationship to burgeon.

Ashok Malik sets the agenda for the upcoming Indian Ocean Region - Association for Regional Cooperation Dialogue, steered by the three nations.

The relationship between Australia and India has reached a new maturity: that was key theme of a major bilateral dialogue convened from Sydney to Canberra to Melbourne, in early 2014.

The Australia-India Roundtable, the leading informal dialogue between the two countries, began in Sydney on Monday, 3 February.

Relations between Australia and India are poised at an historic moment. These two Indian Ocean democracies have struggled for decades to find political traction, but in recent years the ground has shifted in positive ways.

Australian premier Anthony Albanese’s consequential visit to India unveils opportunities for trade, investment, energy cooperation and greater naval engagement in the Indo-Pacific. If these take off, the strategic architecture of the Indo-Pacific could be poised for a big transformation

With India's annual inflation rate rising to a near four-year high on a point-to-point basis on the back of rising food prices, the search for policies to combat the price rise poses unusual challenges. The nature and causes of the current spiraling inflation in India has become a subject of intense debate, primarily because of the ostensible role of `imported inflation' in driving the domestic prices north. Issues like poor performance of the Pu

India need to do more to speed up its own financial sector reforms and make it stronger because the percentage of NPAs has reached a dangerous level of 4.45 per cent and could reach 6 per cent soon. Unless the banking system is strong, India cannot be on a higher trajectory of growth.

When the rest of the nation is looking up to a brighter day in the New Year, Andhra Pradesh, faced with the revived Telangana issue, may be knotting itself in very many complicated ways, and the unknotting could become even more complicated with each such unknotting.

The synchronised protest marches undertaken by Imran Khan, the chairman of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and cleric Tahir-ul Qadri, chairman of the Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT), culminated in a combined sit-in outside the Parliament building in Islamabad.

Farooq and Omar Abdullahs are not sufficiently "provincial" to manage a province. They are cosmopolitan men with considerable potential on the national turf - and we are short of such personalities on the national stage.

Since 2010, Pakistan has already violated the ceasefire more than 222 times. In 2012 alone, there were 117 instances, mostly concentrated in the Uri and Krishna Ghati areas.

The Parliamentary Standing Committee's (on Personnel, Public Grievances, and Law & Order) decision to consider the possibility of recommending 'concurrent' or 'simultaneous' elections to the Lok Sabha and all State Assemblies across the country is a suggestion worth serious consideration, like very many other aspects of electoral reforms.

It is time to pause to remind Prime Minister Modi of his campaign promise "minimum government, maximum governance". It is sad this is one promise being heard less and less of each passing day.

Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, in his five years as the martial law administrator, has never faced challenges of the magnitude he is grappling with now. Internally, Pakistan is faced with a crisis on many fronts. Despite a stable Government for over five years, and scores of promises, there is no sign of democracy.

No other State seems to have treated its women as brutally as Uttar Pradesh routinely does. While UP comes after Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal, let us not forget that that these two States are badly riddled with Naxalism which gives another turn to the discussion.

A two-day seminar 'Understanding China' was aimed at making an in-depth study of China's overall South Asian policy

India is strategically investing in manufacturing and industrialisation or more accurately reversing what has been called a "premature de-industrialization". However, while precision manufacture will create value, it will not create jobs, certainly not as many as India needs.

Anura Kumara Dissanayake, JVP, Sri Lanka, India, China, foreign policy, economic crisis, governance, SAGAR, Indo-Lanka accord, Indian investments, transparency, SOEs, Chinese loans

The decision by the Pakistani and the Chinese authorities to cancel the programme for the formal inauguration of the newly-constructed Gwadar port by the Chinese Prime Minister Mr Wen Jiabao during his recent visit to Pakistan gave a clear indication of the further deterioration in the situation in Balochistan.

Several thousand Baloch men and women nationalists are known to have gone missing, and, as usual, the authorities have unleashed sectarian terrorists in Balochistan to discredit the nationalists by injecting their reliable hit men from the ASWJ, the successors to Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. They have repeatedly killed Hazara Shias in Balochistan.

While there has been considerable commentary in Pakistan about what happened to jounalist Hamid Mir, there is silence about the fast unto death by a young Baloch, Latif Johar who has been seeking the release of Zahid Baloch, Chairman of the Baloch Students' Organisation.

As already pointed out in our earlier articles on this subject, the unrest is, inter alia, due to anger over the suppression of the nationalist aspirations of the Balochs by the Government in Islamabad,

Awake my Punjab, Pakistan is ebbing away, Baloch poet, philosopher and Left Wing activist lawyer, Habib Jalib wrote, "Our Dreams have faded now, Pakistan is ebbing away, / Sindh, Baluchistan, have been weeping for ages.

Pakistan¿s largest province, Baluchistan, is again on the boil. Two rocket firing incidents took place in early December, 2005. The first incident involved firing on a helicopter carrying the Inspector-General of the Frontier Corps. In the second, a rocket was fired at a public meeting addressed by Gen Pervez Musharraf at Kohlu. These incidents appear to have provided an immediate provocation to launch an operation by the Pakistan Army and the F

A delegation of visiting Members of Parliament from Bangladesh, taking part in an interaction with academics, media-persons and ORF faculty, hoped that the new government in India would take the relations between the two countries to a different level.

It would be useful if India adopted a more generous approach towards resolving some of the contentious issues which have hindered a stronger bilateral relationship

Delivering the 4th RK Mishra Memorial Lecture, Bangladesh's Foreign Minister, Dr Dipu Moni, called for a Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna Basin Regime, going beyond the boundaries of Bangladesh and India, to address the common realities of our region.

Rather than rushing to deport people, the new Modi government needs to carefully weigh a solution that will benefit all stakeholders. After all, friendly relations with its neighbors is in India's interests.

Bangladesh have witnessed changes in the last eight years, but they were not enough, according to speakers at a conference on India's relationship with Bangladesh.

Bangladesh's journey of democracy did not have a healthy start and it is still struggling with establishing a fully functioning democracy as is seen by the presence of confrontational politics and the dysfunctional parliament, according to former Bangladesh Major General Muniruzzaman.

Bangladesh needs to be commended for its efforts in fighting the rightwing militancy. The anti-militancy drive initiated by the Awami League Government in 2009 was further intensified in 2010

Though the Hasina Government is pursuing an active counter-terrorism programme and has succeeded in controlling the activities of various radical organisations in the real world, it has failed to curb their activities in the virtual world.

Securing Bangladesh's energy supply in the face of its growing needs has been the primary motivation for the country to sign the recent agreement with Russia for cooperation in the peaceful use of nuclear technology.

The so-called crack-down on religious extremist elements ordered by Prime Minister Khaleda Zia of Bangladesh has been selective.

Media in Bangladesh recently reported that China is all set to win the contract of the coveted deep-sea port in Sonadia, a small town of 9 sqkm offshore of Cox's Bazaar in Chittagong division.

On 5 January, parliamentary elections were held in Bangladesh. They were boycotted by the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP)-led 18 party alliance, allowing the Awami League to win the election with two thirds majority and with very little opposition.

The settlement of the maritime dispute between India and Bangladesh has ended the energy politics in the Bay of Bengal region. The verdict from The Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) has removed obstacle for Bangladesh to exploit the rich hydro-carbon reserves in the Bay of Bengal.