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While India's economic presence in the Gulf region has transformed from merely an exchanges between merchants and human capital, as a geopolitical player, India's role has remained subdued.

The story began on March 18th, when Pakistan¿s leader Gen. Pervez Musharraf casually mentioned in an interview with CNN¿s Aaron Brown that it is likely that Pakistani troops have surrounded a ¿High Value Target¿ in the tribal ¿agency¿ of South Waziristan. Some enterprising Pakistani ¿intelligence official¿ leaked to the eager

Of all the reasons, there is one reason why the world must pay immediate attention to what is happening in Balochistan. Here, a military dictator ruling without any political legitimacy for more than five years has now launched an ethnic cleansing which, to say the least, is colossally retrogressive and inhuman.

With the Chinese refusal to take charge of the operations at Pakistan's Gwadar Port and a series of handicaps and security issues, this facility may fail to achieve its intended target of building it into a strategic asset.

Hamas was never a household name beyond a point unlike Al-Qaeda or the Islamic State. Until now

Even if there’s a ground invasion by Israel into Gaza and an extended conflict, the impact on energy prices and the resultant OPEC response would depend on the scale and reach that the conflict takes. If it remains localised without affecting major oil producers or transit routes, prices may see limited immediate change, prompting OPEC to maintain current production levels

The author, who was part of the ORF delegation which took part in discussions with Chinese party and government officials, says that the possibilities for India and China to collaborate must transcend boundary disputes and other age-old issues.

Did New Delhi’s ‘big-stick’ approach make Beijing pipe down on the LAC?

Good politics must also be good economics. Acting irresponsibly is not politically rational — there is an appetite now amongst voters for hard reform.

As the Year 2005 draws to a close, it is worthwhile to find out where are we today on the path of reconciliation with Pakistan? Is there a process to the peace?

Professional diplomats will find little that is new or startling in the Wikileaks cables. For them the quality and content of reporting in the leaked cables is quite standard fare. Transmitting to Headquarters information gleaned from contacts, assessing its worth,

Agriculture remains the world’s biggest employer and the most important source of food and raw material for various economic activities. The fulfillment of a number of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is anchored on the performance of the sector. This brief examines the most crucial negative consequences of how modern agriculture is practiced, and how these will make it difficult for the world to realise the SDGs. Drawing on examples fr

Due to the persistent adversarial nature of the Sino-Indian border environment, and because China is now a de facto maritime neighbour as well, India needs to examine its options of leveraging sea power. This brief analyses some fundamentals of sea control and sea denial, and examines some misconceptions about these. By using factors of time, force and space, the brief argues that while maritime economic warfare (explained as counter-value operat

The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aim to “leave no one behind’’ and directed all countries to work together to end poverty and other deprivations. Achieving the SDGs requires collaborative strategies aimed at improving technologies of the Least Developing Countries (LDCs) in the productive sectors such as agriculture. Understandably, in most developing countries, the agriculture sector is characterised by informality, small scale,

India and Nepal are fellow riparian nations in South Asia and thus could potentially use their shared water resources as avenues for collaborative effort. Using water to generate hydropower for maximum benefit comes from a place of mutual interest, allowing for optimum leverage for the socio-economic development of both countries. This brief outlines a history of the India-Nepal hydroelectric power scenario, and offers recommendations for growth.

Forests help mitigate the impacts of climate change, provide economic benefits for the country, and meet specific facets of India’s sustainable development goals. It is essential, therefore, to revisit India’s forest governance and evaluate the country’s efforts at forest restoration and conservation. This brief examines the current state of India’s forests, explores the effectiveness of forest restoration and conservation measures, and r

The Indo-US agenda is vast – there are issues to be clinched, points to be clarified and misunderstandings to be cleared.

Overall, the infrastructure sector is the winner in this year's budget. The allocation to the sector will go up by 700 bn rupees in 2015/16 over last year. But this sector needs consolidation in policy framework starting from approval to implementation and an institutional mechanism for fair pricing and competition.

The future of the Wagner Group, a private mercenary conglomerate linked to Russian foreign policy, is uncertain, raising questions about its global footprint.

Bangladesh's bilateral relations with India got a major boost with its Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's visit to Tripura on January 11 and 12. Sheikh Hasina visited the north-eastern Indian State to attend the convocation of the Tripura Central University at Agartala.

ORF Chennai chapter pays tribute to R K Mishra, Chairman of the Observer Research Foundation.

The essence of SSC is pivotal & sincere. But it is not devoid of criticism. The use of the word, ‘South’, itself reflects the colonial hangover that developing countries are trying to shed

With Xi Jinping and the Communist Party facing various pressures, Beijing could be tempted to deflect the attention

Given the historically polarised health policy debates in the country, we need to guard ourselves against alarmism and sensationalism in mass media.

Healthcare in India could use the help of better data and analysis from both public health systems and private sector interventions.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused unprecedented stress on India’s urban public health infrastructure, underscoring the need for urban planning to account for increased demand for health amenities during crises. This paper evaluates the city of Mumbai’s 1991 and 2034 development plans and finds inherent infrastructural inadequacies. It calls on urban-policymakers to complement development plans with robust dynamic health strategies that conside

The increasing range of cross-boundary health issues has prompted the integration of health into the discipline of diplomacy, and this trend is reflected in India-Africa partnership. India’s development partnerships are, however, predicated on the idea of development effectiveness, which requires active private sector engagement. By focusing on four opportunity sectors — medical tourism, tele-health, frugal innovations, and the pharmaceutica

Public health is identified by BIMSTEC member countries as one among its fourteen priority areas for cooperation. Such collaborations, however, have been limited around traditional medicine. This year’s launch of the JIPMER-BIMSTEC Telemedicine Network (JBTN) which combines public health, communication, and technology, is bound to change the status quo. In per-capita terms, three BIMSTEC members are wealthier than India, while three are poorer.

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 underfunded, understaffed and ill-equipped to deal with the monumental challenge of disease burden. This paper aims to compare the he

As Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani arrives in India on Saturday for the Heart of Asia (HoA) ministerial conference in Amritsar, India's Afghan policy is becoming more robust.

Schemes have been announced — though how they’ll work is a mystery.

The story doing the rounds in Delhi is that in another exhibition of generosity, India is about to withdraw from the Saltoro Ridge (commonly referred to as the Siachen Glacier) in the interest of peace, but without securing the country¿s strategic interests.

If Hindu extremism prevails, India will have little to give the world and be in no mood to learn. Unless the PM acts now to check these negative forces, Modi and the agenda for India could end up being a minor part of the vast collateral damage.

At a roundtable on the situation in Bangladesh, experts underlined the need for ensuring a credible election in Bangladesh for the country's stability and the strengthening of India-Bangladesh relations.

If internecine clashes in the eastern Afghan city of Herat are a sign of the things to come, peaceful political evolution of the country seems to be a messy affair. Around 50 people had been killed in those clashes that continued for eight hours in one of the more stable cities of Afghanistan.

Young Indians are ambitious and show greater autonomy in their career decisions.

In Delhi, the Army still honours its martyrs in the airport parking lot as, ostensibly due to security concerns, it doesn't have access to the reception area built last year.

West Bengal Governor M.K. Narayanan thinks that India must carve out an area of influence for herself as China has made it clear that it is not going to restrict itself to Western Pacific, and so, there is high likelihood that China will come into the Indian Ocean because of its interest in oil.

This brief examines India’s defence budget for 2023-24. It outlines the economic context for India’s latest defence allocations, and examines the drivers of growth, the broad distribution of resources among the defence forces, and the impact of such distribution on modernisation and the domestic defence industry. The brief posits that the new defence budget, coming on the back of a hefty mid-year upward revision of the previous alloca

It is becoming increasingly clear that a resolution to the Kashmir dispute cannot be delayed much longer if the peace process between India and Pakistan is to yield tangible results in the foreseeable future. This period cannot be longer than five years.

It is time that the Modi Government carried out a comprehensive assessment of our internal security structures and put in place measures to enhance their efficacy. Also, the feasibility of the earlier proposal by the army for permitting lateral movement of its personnel into the CAPF needs to be re-examined.

The government has to free India's top 50 institutions across all disciplines from the iron grip of UGC and AICTE. The institutions must be given the freedom to devise their own course curriculum. After all they have the best subject experts.

There is uncertainty in the availability of domestic coal and in this context there is probably a need to rethink India's energy security strategy based on domestic coal

The three debates between Clinton and Trump are over and countdown to the big day has started. It has become a much tighter race than it was a week ago