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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.

Despite the strategic significance of the corridor leading to Bomdila, Selapass, Tawang and Bumla Pass, the state of the road infrastructure is deplorable. Accessibility to food, proper sanitation, waste disposal and more importantly transport and logistics are some of the key concerns.

The future of Indian cities will be good if planning starts now in all earnest. Every big city in the world has gone through the phases that Indian cities are currently experiencing but each managed to come out of that stage and eschewed stark human deprivation, though many still have ghettos.

Bangladesh has to change its energy policy resulting from demand outstripping the current supply. The country believes in energy autarky with focus solely on use of indigenous resources. But frequent changes of regimes and policies by subsequent governments has only helped arrival of more international oil and gas companies in the Bangladesh market.

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.

China, Japan and South Korea have a long way to go in their trilateral free trade agreement. The road to an agreement is going to be long and complex. However, how this trilateral venture is going to be viewed by the US is to be watched with care and interest.

PM Abe has activated Japan's Central Asian diplomacy like no other leader did before. However, he is realistic enough to understand the enormous Chinese influence in the region. Rather than seeking to supplant that influence, Abe only wants to project Japan as an important and useful partner in the Central Asian scene.

Dr. Manmohan Singh's visit to Dhaka early September would undoubtedly be a 'game changer' for the India-Bangladesh relations which has been swaying between optimism and scepticism for quite sometime.

Prime Minister Jhala Nath Khanal on Sunday stepped down from his post, a day after his self-imposed deadline to resign ended on Saturday, August 13. He admitted to have failed in bringing major political parties on-board to advance the peace process.

Why has Modi chosen to be India's first prime minister to visit Mongolia? Mongolia is indeed a very sensitive neighbour of China, and the investment of the PM's time in Mongolia seems worthwhile. To be sure, there has been a geopolitical dimension to India's engagement with Mongolia.

Given the ground realities - where China's power exceeds ours by orders of magnitude - we need allies. That is where relationships with the US, Japan, ASEAN and Australia come in.

Prime Minister Modi has come to symbolise an aspirational India who has been chosen as "an agent of change rather than continuity." Experts think it is unfair to judge him in such a short time. His success depends on whether the rhetoric of the elections would translate into governance.

The rise of Narendra Modi from the Gujarat chief ministerial chair to that of the prime minister of the world's largest democracy within a short period of 18 months as a phenomenon is being studied, analysed and written about across the world but there is more to come.

Modi's strategy to navigate the impossible trinity of US, China and Europe-Russia is clear. Engage with the US, Japan and Germany aggressively and integrate into their value chains. Keep expectations low but exchange lofty targets with the Chinese and the Russians.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has begun yet another important foreign visit, this time to all the five Central Asian republics. It is a well-timed visit. India cannot possibly replace or compete with China and Russia, but it can definitely improve its visibility in the region and provide much needed room for strategic manoeuvrability.

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.

Posturing for domestic audiences on Pakistan in election year is easy. But dealing with the challenges emanating from an increasingly unstable Pakistan will not be. And if we don't draw the right lessons from Manmohan Singh's failures, there will be no end to the tragedy of India's Pakistan policy.

Dr. Manmohan Singh's recent successful visit to Japan and his sixth annual summit meeting with the Japanese Prime Minister formed one more significant milestone on the road to strengthening and consolidating India's partnership with Japan.

As Manmohan Singh meets Myanmar's President in the sidelines of the Bimstec summit, this will give an opportunity for the two leaders to further deepen bilateral ties. As part of the two neighbours growing relations, a border security pact is expected to be signed during Dr Singh's visit.

India has to be realistic enough to understand that heightened engagement between India and China in BRICS or any other multilateral fora has serious limitations - limitations imposed by the underlying Chinese objective of keeping India bogged down in South Asia as a regional power.

Dr. C. Rangarajan, Chairman of the Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council, has made an impressive case for "economic statesmanship" which he said would ensure inclusive growth and stability in India as well as globally.

Though India and China failed to resolve the issue of the stapled visa for those hailing from Arunachal Pradesh, there was substantial progress in other areas. The memorandum of understanding speaks about nine deals signed during the visit of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit, his sixth bilateral summit with the U.S. leader in nine years in office, will not be of great significance because the circumstances of what go into a successful summit do not exist. That has to do with the paralysis of governance in New Delhi, but equally the distemper that afflicts Washington.

Russia is considering supplying Hydrocarbons to India through pipelines and both countries have commissioned joint study groups to analyse the feasibility of the project.

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.

The composite dialogue between India and Pakistan has reached a critical juncture. In the past 20 months, there have been countless discussions on a variety of issues that have been plaguing the relationship between the two neighbours.

While technocentric threats pose evolved security problems that need to be addressed, overhauling the police force is essential to move forward.

Starting with the challenges faced by Indian petroleum sector in its hydrocarbon discoveries, the scenario remains to be unimpressive even after nine rounds of NELP bidding. Out of sedimentary basin area of 3.14 million km2 only 22 per cent has been well explored, while similar percentage is poorly explored.

On March 13, 2006, the Union Home Minister announced a 14-point policy on Naxalism in the Lok Sabha as outlined in a booklet, 'Status Paper on the Naxal Problem'. In an effort to counter political criticism and allay the oft- repeated concerns of knowledgeable and informed circles,

It is easy to be cynical about the elections in Iran to choose a new president. After all, the elected president does not dominate Iran's complex political system. That privilege belongs to the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. This does necessarily mean the current elections are inconsequential.

Brigadier V R P Sarathy (retd) initiated a discussion on Political Developments in Pakistan and Impact on India on Saturday 22, 2007 in ORF Chennai. He started his discussion on Pakistan's political development with Stephen P. Cohen's words: 'Pakistan is cursed by history but blessed by geography - always at the right place at the wrong time'.

The BJP, which benefited the most from the Babri Masjid-Ramjanmabhoomi temple dispute catapulting it to power in 1998, would be faced with a serious dilemma in either case of the two possible judgments of the Allahabad High Court on September 24.

There has been a large degree of unpredictability with which political movements have gained weight in the region, making providing humanitarian aid to affected areas very difficult, according to the chief of the International Committee of Red Cross.

Although mired in a state of conflict for the past two decades, the year 2011 has turned out to be particularly bad for Somalia. The United Nations declared famine in regions of Bakool and Lower Shabelle on July 20.

As the election season heats up in the US, the language of fear and name calling is rampant within parties and between parties. Instilling fears of the other candidate into the minds of voters, through campaign rhetoric and negative ads and distributed many times over by the power of new media technologies, has emerged an important feature of the campaigns.

The Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, Nara Chandrababu Naidu, announced on November 14, 2003 that the forthcoming mid-term elections to the State Legislature would be fought on the issue of ¿crushing¿ the Naxalites. He declared in Hyderabad, in the presence of the national media, that Naxalite violence was hampering development and progress in the State.

For a person who knows his business economics well, the Railway Minister obviously realises that he will need money to make that happen. That is why his speech contained so many references to the need for budgetary support from the government.

With the decisive verdicts in these Assembly elections, and more Assembly elections slated in Uttar Pradesh and a host of others States before 2014 general elections, the voter has put Governments and leaders on notice, when it comes to performance and accountability.

Prof. Feng Zhongping, Vice President of the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, feels that US's rebalancing strategy in Asia is not entirely designed to contain China but also based on economic considerations.

At an Interaction of the ORF Chennai Chapter of the Observer Research Foundation on 5 January 2008, Mr K J M Varma, until recently the Special Correspondent of the Press Trust of India (PTI) at Islamabad, spoke on 'Pakistan after Benazir Bhutto'

Attention has to be focussed on Saudi Arabia as it enters a period of transition and uncertainty in the wake of reports about a deterioration in the health of King Fahd, who has been admitted in hospital. In the absence of authentic reports on his health, rumours are rife that his end may be near.

As Rwanda commemorates 1994 genocide, now it has become a global example of successful post-conflict reconstruction. A talk at ORF by Rwandan High Commissioner Ernest Rwamucyo focussed on post-genocide Rwanda's unique story where ownership and innovative "home-grown solutions" helped re-construct the nation.

What are India's options to make Space Based Solar Power a real viable option given the cost factor and technology? Can the governments and the private sectors of both India and the US make serious commitments to take the first step towards R&D investment on SBSP?