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Narendra Modi’s trip to Sweden highlights the importance of an often-neglected region for India.

Prime Minister Modi is scheduled to visit Maldives in mid-March as part of the first-ever four-nation southern Indian Ocean trip by any Indian leader. The greater success and long-term achievement of the visit, will depend also on how it all goes and goes down well just now.

Why will Moscow be an immense diplomatic challenge for India?

With Maldives veering towards China, Mauritius is emerging as a decisive factor in ensuring India’s dominance in the Indian Ocean Region

India and Bangladesh’s relationship has been growing steadily over the past few years, especially since Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina came to power in January 2009. In 2019, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi described the relationship as being in its “golden era (Sonali Adhyay).” Indeed, Bangladesh is at the centre of India’s flagship ‘Neighbourhood First’ and ‘Act East’ policies, and has been crucial in ensuring peace

PM Modi and Manohar Parrikar have lately been attempting to set the record straight about the issue of disability pension of the military.

Politicians are trying hard to keep behind curtains the true state of affairs along the Line of Actual Control but it’s only adding to credibility deficit

Theodore Roosevelt in his famous dictum “speak softly, and carry a big stick,” spoke on Pakistan Occupied Kashmir and Balochistan.

The visit of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani in New Delhi this week offers an opportunity to PM Modi to recalibrate India's Afghan policy towards greater realism and more modest goals. Modi must reassure Ghani that Delhi is in a "standby" mode, ready to extend, whatever support Kabul wants and feels comfortable with.

PM Modi's 'Make in India' is a grand idea to reboot the ailing manufacturing sector. But the success of this programme will largely depend on creating an enabling ecosystem for manufacturing. This would require serious reforms in taxation.

Top 10 commentaries by ORF analysts this year.

Our 20 most–read commentaries this year.

You would say that Trudeau was ‘playing politics’ and that his remarks are really addressed to the Sikh community of Canada. So what’s the problem? After all, did not our Prime Minister undertake major political rallies in the US? In the Houston ‘Howdy Modi’ rally last year, US President Donald Trump himself participated, uncharacteristically playing second fiddle, all because he, like all democratic politicians, likes votes.

This Special Report is based on some of the most important ideas shared amongst participants in ORF's roundtable on Changing Geoeconomic Landscapes, held on 21 December 2015 in New Delhi. The discussion examined current patterns in world economy, initiatives being taken by the Indian leadership to steer domestic economy, and the need for the country to carefully integrate its domestic economic priorities, including those of reforms, with its fore

The happy news must have reached — like Maneka (of Vishwamitra fame) — to interrupt a meditating Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his Kedarnath cave.

Big ticket reforms promised by Mr. Narendra Modi are likely to resume stalled projects and revive business climate. However, if India is to return to its erstwhile double digit growth, the importance of banking sector reforms cannot be overstated.

The threat to India and Indian interests will still come from Pakistan-based terrorist forces. The name of the terrorist regiment or the colour of its uniform is not important. Conceivably, the first test for the Modi government will be in Afghanistan.

India and Saudi Arabia are re-defining their foreign policy priorities: For New Delhi, Saudi Arabia and the Arab Gulf states are becoming key interlocutors in the Middle East. For Riyadh, India is one of the eight major powers with which it wants to forge strategic partnerships as part of its Vision 2030.

While the Modi government is settling down with a positive and constructive agenda, certain negative forces are raising their heads which tend to take away the shine from the Modi government. In Maharashtra, the Hindu Rashtra Sena has been active in promoting communal propaganda.

The Modi government has declared that virtually everyone who opposes its policies in Jammu and Kashmir is a terrorist. This makes it difficult to find a way out of the Kashmir miasma.

For now, it’s more important for the government to keep things stable until it’s clear how best to intervene.

That economic diplomacy through the Northeast has over-shadowed security-related concerns in India's regional diplomacy is a major departure from the past. Connectivity has been identified as a priority area of the Modi government.

What is new is the fact that Delhi under Modi is no longer coy about affirming its position in conjunction with the US. A self-assured Modi is injecting a measure of pragmatism and openness into India's positions.

A convergence of strategic interests and regular interactions have resulted in one of India’s most dynamic and consequential bilateral relationships

Delhi’s positions on these issues reflect its world view. But domestic economic and political challenges remain.

The Modi Government is reportedly trying to bring a legislation which will overhaul the antiquated bankruptcy law. Now whether the government will succeed or face the same obdurate tyranny of numbers as recent other reform bills remains a matter of conjecture.

The superciliousness of western media is surpassed only by Pakistan's unabashed statements on CAA and preaching secularism to India.

Dominance in the Baloch region could be passing on to China. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) is the newest instrument.

Islamabad will deploy all political and diplomatic tools to lobby in the West. But it senses failure

Both India and France are guided by fiercely autonomous foreign policies that are paying their dividends in today’s transactional and volatile world

Trump 2.0 has given India-US ties a strategic uplift

After much bonhomie in Beijing, PM Modi has moved on to raise India's strategic profile in two key states on China's periphery - Mongolia and South Korea. Although geography limits New Delhi's role in East Asia, Modi is betting India can win friends and partners through active engagement.

India today is much better placed to deal with the emerging rivalry between Beijing and Tokyo. On the economic front, Modi should eagerly seek cooperation from both sides. Commercial competition between Tokyo and Beijing, for example on high-speed railways, should work to India's advantage.

Modi and Obama need to focus less on India's near-term carbon emissions and find ways to boost its use of renewable energy like solar and wind. Such an approach will address Delhi's need to grow its economy and Washington's desire to lessen the weight of coal in India?s energy mix.

India will continue to be seen as an important partner for the UK post-Brexit. Boris Johnson is fond of India and considers Narendra Modi a “political phenomenon”.

What does the future hold for this long-standing relationship?

For any nation, development of infrastructure is essential to ensure growth. India has lagged on this front for some time now and the Modi government plans to give a major push to infrastructure. The government is in the process of preparing an ambitious infrastructure programme for the next 10 years.

To stop the coronavirus, the government will have to be there for its people in unprecedented ways.

The most important question that comes to mind after China has lifted its hold on Masood Azhar’s designation as a terrorist under UN rules is: Why now? Why plumb in the middle of the general elections?

To convert Modi's vision of more governance and less government into a quantifiable experience requires a change in the prevailing mindset of electronic governance as an exclusive issue of hardware and connectivity. The approach has to be reoriented towards intelligence, analytics, real-time data points, interlinked cross-tabulation and smart solutions.

Separating the reality from the hype in Prime Minister Modi's visit to Israel isn't an easy task.

The timing of the recent India-Pakistan agreement can’t be a coincidence, and the Modi government needs to watch its back.

As a new government led by Maithripala Sirisena takes charge in Colombo, New Delhi has a valuable opportunity to arrest the drift in bilateral relations over the last few years. The Modi government, less constrained internally than the UPA government, is in a good position to rebuild the partnership with Sri Lanka that occupies a vital position on India's maritime frontiers to the south.