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There is no easy answer to the question of how best to balance all the competing water use priorities of the Ganga. But one thing is clear: as long as rivers are seen merely as pipes for conveying water, and challenges of distribution are addressed primarily through engineering rather than policy, then no solution will be appropriate.

The deal with Iran should boost efforts to do an Iran with North Korea's nuclear programme as well. This would be more difficult given the authoritarian nature of the regime in North Korea but is still an idea worth pursuing. The major powers should carry forward the momentum and energy to solve other issues in the Middle East.

As Chinese economy is facing its worst slowdown in recent times, for Africa, Modi's new India might turn out to be the one viable alternative to China. Therefore, the upcoming India-Africa Summit will be an occasion to harness this opportunity and seek a meaningful strategic engagement beneficial to both the countries.

India's agriculture has not grown fast enough to support the growing rural population and there has been a continuous exodus of people migrating from villages to towns in search of jobs

Noted sports writer Mr. R. Mohan says that India could host the Olympic Games from 2030s if it learns to stick to schedules and avoid scandals, which had brought bad name initially in the case of the Delhi Commonwealth Games.

The list of China's signs of displaying its assertiveness in the South China Sea is numerous - like the incident with the Japanese coast guard and the USNS Impeccable. The Pentagon accused the Chinese vessels of "harassment" during the US ship's routine operations in international waters.

Iran represents a complex policy challenge that needs to be carefully weighed. Any assessment will need to look not only at the benefits but also the costs of not changing course on Iran. But fence-sitting and procrastination might be an unsustainable and expensive choice.

In Sri Lanka, whoever wins or loses the parliamentary polls, and whoever forms the government afterward, it's President Maithripala Sirisena who would be at the centre of all post-poll politics over the ethnic issue, political solution and 'accountability issues' of the UNHRC kind.

When tempers have cooled down, and the plateau regained, we should rethink IBDH, enforce strict set of "Devyani Guidelines," and derisk an entire gamut of ties - sadly, the US one being the only legacy Manmohan Singh might have had!

Australia's Murray-Darling example is not a panacea for the basin-wide river management of the Ganga. And it is not through lack of international role models that a genuinely holistic, basin-wide approach has not been applied to the Ganga; it is through a lack of domestic political will to do so.

If Narenda Modi could turn around Gujarat's agriculture so dramatically, he can be instrumental in turning around agricultural productivity, marketing and storage in all States. He has to act quickly. Otherwise, there would be more problems of large scale migration from the rural to cities.

All that the government has to do is to focus on providing basic goods -- high quality primary education and healthcare, toilets and housing for all. When there is so much money in India in private and public hands, why is it taking so long for the government to do something to change the lives of millions of people?

Though India dreams of replicating the shale gas successes of the US, it cannot enjoy the luxury of easily acquiring land for shale gas operations. In the US, landowners, besides owning surface rights, also own mineral rights. Consequently, they receive huge financial incentives directly from oil and gas companies.

In an ironic situation, President Obama finds his own party, the Democrats, his key opponents while, the Republicans, his greatest allies as he pushes for the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement.

Taliban's origins are very much in the Pakistan's State agencies and hence it cannot be called a non-State actor. It is too large and too fragmented to be taken up as one enemy. For PM Nawaz Sheriff to declare that there is 'no good or bad Taliban' is just an empty rhetoric and still part of the same old double-speak.

Conflicts in the Middle East have been exacerbated by competition over natural resources. Within the United States, there is growing bipartisan interest in reducing dependence on foreign oil.

Russia's military intervention in Syria in September, 2015, is a new gambit by its president, Vladimir Putin. It could change the course of history, and even geography, in that region or bog down Russia in a West Asian quagmire.

Compared to India and Norway, South Africa may have entered Sri Lanka first and re-entered now to a relatively positive start, or so it seemed. Their timing now proves to be wrong, and their proposals thus may not either be heard, or acted upon.

The contradictions in the path of India's global rise and its accompanying stature as an important player in international affairs, while it grapples with issues of food security, rising prices, inflation and governance challenges, were highlighted by senior academician Dr. Mira Kamdar at a talk titled "Can the Centre hold?" at Observer Research Foundation recently (February 17).

The compulsion of states to trawl ever increasing volumes of data must also be understood. Besides criminal activities like child pornography, money laundering and online fraud, the Internet is also an important vehicle for the jihadist terrorist. A great deal of recruitment and motivation takes place online.

A common enemy does often become a powerful uniting force, but the fact that the US has so many friends and not a single ally to fight the Islamic State speaks volumes about its foreign and defence policies in Wes Asia.

2004 is a significant year for Europe. In May of this year, the European Union (EU) will induct ten new members, eight of which were part of the former Communist regime of the Soviet Union. While four of these East European states (Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia) are struggling with mounting budget deficits and contemplating awkward spending cuts, France and Germany (the dominant European powers) are immersed in a deep economic

A civil nuclear agreement is one of the key outcomes New Delhi is pushing for in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Japan that starts on August 30. Recently, in Naypidaw, Myanmar, foreign minister Sushma Swaraj called on her Japanese counterpart Fumio Kishida to "bring talks on civil nuclear agreement to their logical conclusion".

Can good sense prevail in Washington once again? Military action in Libya will generate anti Americanism, which will swell the ranks of Al Qaeda and cause the "Arab Youth" bulge to find a frightening outlet.

In China, villages have the same facilities in housing, water, drainage, medical care as in towns. If the government of India wishes to reduce the migratory flows, then each village has to be transformed to a small town ? at least in infrastructure.

Accusing the US and the EU of practising double-standards, Russian Consul General in Chennai, Dr Nikolay A Listopadov, has said the interests of the EU and the US would be accepted as long as they did not come in the way of Russia's.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Canada this week should help rejuvenate an important relationship that has long been neglected in New Delhi. If real political differences alienated India and Canada during the Cold War, it is Delhi that has not been sufficiently attentive to the possibilities with Canada in recent years.

Canada's Deputy NSA Claude Vigneault says his country's decade-old presence in Afghanistan as part of American coalition has given them a better sense of India's security concerns and is keen to collaborate with it.

The new generation challenge for our diplomats and policy makers today is to capture the American mindspace. This is a task that requires subtlety, but its crucial asset is the human capital connect that we have established with the US.

Since France has said that it will not be continually involved in African intervention, the solution to security problems in Africa must come from the Africans themselves. The establishment of a pan-African force to react to crisis with support from Europe has been suggested by France.

By not backing the political demand of the RJD ally for the exit of then Election Commissioners, B B Tandon and N Gopalswamy, the Centre and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh have silenced avoidable criticism of the constitutional body entrusted with the task of ensuring common man¿s continued faith in parliamentary democracy.

The Nepalese government¿s offer of surrender and rehabilitation to Maoist insurgents¿announced by Foreign Minister Kamal Thapa on December 18, 2003¿¿whose deadline concluded on the eve of the eighth anniversary of the Maoist ¿People¿s War¿, on February 12, 2004, has met with partial success.

The UPA's cash transfer scheme, delivering over Rs.3.2 lakh crore in subsidies and welfare programmes to the poor directly to their bank accounts, if executed well would not only reduce poverty faster would curb a lot of the wasteful spending that has fattened vested interests at all levels.

There is an urgent need to accept the reality of cattle trade across the Indo-Bangladesh border and the challenge is to bring about a change in the mindset of people on this issue, according experts and former policy makers.

The Centre's Notification of the Cauvery Award should encourage Karnataka and Tamil Nadu to work with the Centre and the other two riparian stake-holders to revive the proposal to build an additional reservoir to store the excess waters, to be shared among them.

Chemical-Biological and Radiological (CBR) threats are being increasingly perceived as the new face of terrorism. The possibility of non-state actors employing non-conventional weapons using CBR materials.

Indian Vice-President Hamid Ansari's recent State visit, coming after the visit by another important Minister (for Commerce and Industry), Anand Sharma, to Bangladesh, has highlighted New Delhi'sefforts and sincerity at improving the burgeoning relationship with its neighbour even more.

There is a need to fix the BRICS, by altering growth strategies, reducing external dependence, securing domestic demand and investments, providing jobs to the unemployed, and aiming at lowering untenable inequality.

The BRICS is growing more relevant and increasingly institutionalised. Economic growth rates continue to outpace the rest of the developing world. According to the UNDP, Brazil, China and India's combined GDP will be greater than the combined GDP of the US, the UK, Canada, France, Germany and Italy by 2020.

In two sets of visits to the Central Asian region in 2013 and 2014, Xi Jinping set a scorching pace for Modi to follow. Unfortunately for India, even a super-star Prime Minister cannot do the impossible. He lacks the vast investible resources that China has already deployed and is deploying in the region.