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Raja Pervez Ashraf became Pakistan's 25th Prime Minister eight months before the country goes to polls. His predecessor, Yousaf Raza Gilani, was disqualified by the Supreme Court on June 19, 2012 for failing to implement court's directions to investigate corruption charges against President Asif Ali Zardari.

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.

No government can tread the path of a single-minded focus on GDP growth. But wanton populism is no answer either, as the widening fiscal deficit must be trimmed.

Pakistan's Prime Minister-designate Shaukat Aziz has been elected to the National Assembly with a thumping majority. His victory is being projected as a peaceful transition of power¿from Jamali to Shujaat to Aziz-- and as a sign of democracy maturing in Pakistan.

It is important to note that while India has emphasised the need to increase its involvement in Myanmar's energy sector, it also recognises the need to take 'socio-environmental consideration' in major energy hydro-power, energy and pipeline projects.

As the 21st century unfolds, India's power dynamic will be determined by its ability to finesse its strategic dilemmas and manage complimentary yet adversarial relationships.

The US threats and its troop presence in South Korea are alleged to have contributed to North Korean insecurity, but its drive to develop more nuclear weaponry cannot be understood without taking into account domestic dynamics. To bring about a genuine change in North Korea's behaviour, its internal dynamics will have to be considered.

The nature of work is changing, leading to the loss of some jobs and the creation of others that require radically changed skills. In India, as the requirements of this evolving labour market change, co-working spaces fulfil many of the new needs. The aim of this paper is twofold: to describe the development of the co-working industry in India, its driving factors, as well as the architecture, design and social aspects of the work environment; a

Can India, in its present state of economy, afford the colossal amount of expenditure and administrative confusion in creating new States? The answer is firmly in the negative. Therefore, it is advisable for the UPA Government to remain firm and refuse to accede to the demand for a new commission for the reorganisation of States.

The Delhi Government's Bhagidari programme with all its pitfalls and challenges comes as a refreshing idea in the context of urban governance. Given its potential to transform state-ctizen interface, there is need to give it statutory backing. Also, there is enough space for forther improvement of the programme.

US President Barack Obama's popularity, as well as that of his party, has gone up after his shrewd handling of the lame-duck Congress session. Commentators are now calling him the 'comeback kid' just as they did Clinton in 1994.

The next Russian nuclear reactor plant is likely to come up in Andhra Pradesh, according to Russian Consul-General at Chennai Sergei Kotov. Initiating a discussion on "President Putin's Visit and India-Russia Relations" at ORF Chennai Chapter on January 3, Kotov confirmed that the next plant will not be constructed in Tamil Nadu.

The next steps towards peace with Pakistan need to be thought out carefully to prevent the dialogue process from getting derailed or losing steam - two possibilities which seem to be staring in the face of policy makers on either side of the border.

The Indo-US nuclear deal has been signed. The next step is to get it passed through the US Congress and the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). This also entails amending the laws, so that India can receive the same benefits as those states that are a party to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT).

THE politician's lust for power is a significant factor that has allowed the People's War Group (PWG) Naxalites to grow and gain in strength. Routinely, several political leaders at various levels have sought the rebels' support to win elections. In April 2003, a local legislator in Warangal district went to pay "homage" to a PWG leader killed in a police encounter, Polam Sudarshan Reddy "Ramakrishna",

NGOs that deter economic progress or infrastructure growth have to be actively discouraged. The agenda and priorities have to be Indian and not determined in some remote western city. The government, in turn, has to be transparent and active in providing solutions to environmental and human problems.

While acknowledging the fact that many of the larger NGOs have done phenomenal work in public welfare, a social activist in Chennai has said the motives behind the initiatives of some of them in the country have become questionable.

A suicide terrorist attack on 26 August in the capital city of Nigeria turned global attention on a little-known terrorist group which has potential of emerging as a threat to Western interests in Africa.

Nigeria voted on April 16th, 2011 for a new president. The result: political violence killing over 500 with the number only increasing and thousands of Nigerians injured and internally displaced.

The top priority of any nation in the post-9/11 era is to defend its territorial integrity. This goal faces a real threat from terrorists originating or based in foreign countries, said Mr Andrew T. Simkin, the Consul-General of the US in Chennai.

Saudi Arabia's Nitaqat system has achieved some early success. It has been able to generate jobs for the Saudi population. But its long term success is open to question. It remains to be seen whether 'Saudization' will be successfully implemented long term through quotas and threats of punishment.

Child-friendly cities’ is an emerging concept in the urban management sector in many countries across the globe, including India, where it complements government schemes that aim to develop India’s urban spaces as centres of human capital development, knowledge hubs, and drivers of growth and prosperity. These flagship missions include, for example, the Smart Cities Mission and the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT

Just because China now seems to be in a hurry to move on the border issue should not be cause for New Delhi to reciprocate. We need to weigh the issues carefully and see what serves our interest the best. Anyway, we are not likely to see a final resolution of the border issue in a hurry

The integration of Jammu and Kashmir with the rest of India is the ultimate solution to the Kashmir problem, said Dr. Subha Chandran at an interaction on 'Jammu & Kashmir: Internal Threats and External Interests' at the ORF Chennai Chapter.

Mr. Brajesh Mishra, former National Security Advisor and now Trustee of Observer Research Foundation, recently gave an interview to Mr. Karan Thapar. The interview was televised by CNN-IBN. Given below is the text of the interview"

The recent 'off-the-record' comment by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh against "about 25% Bnagladeshis" has dented the India-Bangladesh relations. There is a need for us to show more sensitivity while dealing with Bangladesh, a country that has gone out of its way to improve its relationship with India.

The current refugee crisis in Europe is unlikely to end soon as one third of Syria's 20 million population are potential migrants, if the situation in the country itself will not change, says Jakob von Weizsaecker, Member of the European Parliament.

Like a bad dream, the Dr AQ Khan episode has returned to haunt the world. There are a number of reasons why it will do so in the coming days. First, it is one of the most serious crimes committed against humanity.

Deploying the "national security" argument against reform in the intelligence agencies is a fig leaf for defending cronyism, incompetence, inefficiency, and corruption. A proper regulatory mechanism can only strengthen national security, not weaken it. It is time to bring in facts and lessons from global best practices to this debate.

India's challenges in negotiating a new framework for internet governance do not lend themselves to the old clichés of Indian diplomacy. Instead, India must strive to find the appropriate balance between the multiple antinomies that define the debate.

As the NDA government recalibrates India's Kashmir and Pakistan policies, Delhi must do a much better job explaining the logic behind the cancellation of the foreign secretary talks, widely seen as abrupt.It must let the international community, especially Pakistan's friends, including the US, China and Saudi Arabia, know India is not abandoning the peace process with Islamabad.

The intolerant liberal in India considers all alternative opinion to be moronic and the right-wing ideologue describes opposition to their stated position as blasphemy. Both are unwilling to listen to the other, much less understand and accept a civilised debate. Consequently, both are equally dangerous.

As India evolves its cyber-fibre, it has many lessons to absorb from the Snowden episode. On the one hand, enforcement is a sine qua non of any law. On the other hand, the government needs to realise that cyberSpace is not your normal run-of-the-mill state highway that state agencies can regulate, patrol and police.

Bhutan's honeymoon with democracy seems to be facing its first challenge, that too from unexpected quarters. For a nation that boasts of measuring its national wealth in terms of Gross National Happiness (GNH) and not conventionally in GDP.

The absence of a standard formulation on the no-first-use of nuclear weapons in the latest Chinese defence white paper has raised questions about a likely evolution in Beijing's nuclear doctrine.

Noises of peace are once again emanating in Maoist insurgency hit-Nepal. The Maoists have expressed their desire to sit at the negotiating table, while, at the same time, creating a blood bath in different parts of the Himalayan Kingdom.

Mr Efraim Halevy, a former Mossad chief and National Security Advisor to the Prime Minister of Israel, addressed the ORF faculty on developments in West Asia

Observer Research Foundation organized a day-long interaction between some of India?s well-known experts and commentators on the north-east on November 18, 2004. The primary objective of the Interaction was to collectively introspect on some of the issues which have troubling the region for more than half-a-century.

Two weeks back an unconfirmed media report stated that hackers from North Korea had illegally accessed Email Ids of students and graduates from the Korea University's Graduate school of Information Security.

The advancements that North Korea has made in terms of miniaturization of the nuclear device may be significant, particularly in the backdrop of long-range delivery vehicles. Having tested the longer-range missiles in recent months, threat to even the US has increased.

North Korean army, which is the fifth largest in the world with a very high artillery pile, should not to be under-estimated, according a former Indian military intelligence official.

China has to recognise that North Korean actions are triggering several developments that are not necessarily in the interests of China - like the major debates in Japan on becoming proactive in defending themselves, including the option of nuclearisation. Can a nuclearised East Asia be ruled out in the next decade if Pyongyang continues on the same path?

While on the surface, both the US (and South Korea and Japan) and China appear to have the goal of seeing a stable Korean Peninsula, there appear to be serious differences about what regional stability means.

North Korea is among the states that stand out for their often defiant behaviour, divergent from typical diplomatic niceties and non-compliant with widely accepted international liberal norms and rules. This ‘uniqueness’ is seen, for instance, in the country’s nuclear weapons development programme, which has been the object of global attention since the early 1990s. North Korea has now extended this behaviour to the cyber domain, marked by

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 Delhi needs is a strategy that will generate some influence for India in shaping the future of the critical northwest sub-region. Such a strategy will necessarily involve sustained dialogue with Pakistan, a recalibration of the Afghan policy, encouragement to the peace talks between Kabul and Rawalpindi and the readiness to engage all powers who have a stake in the region's stability.