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This Issue Brief analyses the possible nuclear and radiological threats that India could face. It also examines the various ways in which these threats could occur and the likely actors inclined to carry them out.

In light of the 2014 NTI Index which ranks India 23rd out of 25 countries with weapons-usable nuclear materials, this issue brief highlights problem areas in the Index and proposes suggestions for improving the Indian nuclear security regime.

A closer reading of the joint statement issued by Chinese President Xi Jinping after a meeting with the President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych last month, suggested China was merely offering boiler plate assurances to Ukraine.

India’s young women, now more educated and healthier than ever, are entering a phase of significant socio-economic progress. Many of these women also aspire to become social innovators. With gender parity in education and an increasing number of women in STEM fields, they have increased potential for social innovation. However, barriers such as gendered social norms, domestic and care responsibilities, the digital divide, safety concerns, limit

The world is experiencing a crucial shift; a new industrial revolution. This time, the colour is green, and the aim is a cleaner, more livable world for future generations. This industrial revolution will require unprecedented access to critical minerals like graphite, cobalt, lithium, and copper, used for some of the most advanced technologies of our time. Many of these minerals are scattered around the globe, and states that do not have the nat

Countries like India are in the phase of a transition where the public policy challenges presented by overnutrition are in addition to those posed by undernutrition, instead of replacing traditional challenges of undernutrition.

India may be the world’s second largest producer of food, but it has its second largest undernourished population. Further, more than half of women in India suffer from anaemia, which is one of the reasons for the high rate of low-birth weight babies. An unbalanced diet and lack of food is directly linked to high rates of stunting, excessive weight, and death in children under five years of age. The Government of India has implemented programme

If the first term of President Obama is any indication, U.S. foreign policy will to continue to develop in a cautious, limited, pragmatic, yet largely reactive manner. There will be few American efforts to order the new multipolar world, or respond proactively to much of anything.

Hard line Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu must know a few things about Andalusia, of which Cordoba was once the capital. His father Professor Benzion Netanyahu specialized in the history of the Jews in Spain!

Though Obama does not want the Tibetan question complicate his effort to build a sustainable partnership with Beijing, he does not want to appear abandoning the human rights issues in China and alienate a significant section of domestic elite opinion.

Alleging the Assad regime's involvement in the last week's chemical attack in the Damascus suburbs, President Barrack Obama said that he has decided to take military action against Syria by launching limited military strike.

Obama's China policy, motivated by an increasing level of interdependence, will involve constructive engagement with China. However, simultaneously, the US will also seek to ensure that their image of being a great power in Pacific-Asia does not change, according to US scholar Prof. Ronald W. Pruessen.

The inadequacy of Barack Obama's Afghanistan and Pakistan strategy stems from the exigencies of the calendar of the next presidential elections in America,

President Obama is definitely more confident and on a high note, though mindful of the fact that his political capital will not last long into his second term; that he has very little time and leeway in which to enact and achieve some of the priorities he stressed during his address.

In search of saliency in the Obama visit, pundits have missed out on "Indo-US" co-operation in Afghanistan, a major shift since the narrative so far has been about US-Pak collaboration in the Af-Pak theatre.

All those, who were until the other day shrugging their shoulders and despairing at no "deliverable" packages during the Obama visit, suddenly have a relaxed pensiveness in their eyes which comes from the dawning of realism. In essence, the visit will be directional, not "destinational".

What India needs badly is FDI with it technology transfer and hopefully that would come after Obama's India visit. The inflows have already raised India's reserves to $322 billion recently. Also, the stock market has been on the roll before and after Obama's visit, though because of reasons other than the visit.

By now, even reluctant observers of American politics would have easily discerned that economy will largely decide who will win the November presidential elections.

New Delhi's knee-jerk political protestations against Barack Obama's remarks on the stalled economic reforms in India have missed out on far more important comments from the President of the United States about Jammu and Kashmir.

In the end, every great power will have to accept the spheres of influence or "special interest zones" of other powers so that there are no clashes in interests. The world will have to adjust to polycentricism and to big powers occasionally rubbing against each other, even if there are no hot conflicts.

The US needs to seriously reconsider its policy of advising African countries about how they go about their foreign policy or risk losing any goodwill it has left in the region. Also, perhaps, Obama's Africa visit has come too late in the day and his promises are too little to entice the Africans.

Barack Obama's strategic problem now is to reassure east Asian allies of the strength of American commitment to them without provoking an unwanted conflict between the US and China.

Pakistan's cooperation against extremist groups has been selective, targetting those threatening its own stability but avoiding action against the Afghan Taliban seen as strategic assets for controlling Afghanistan once the US withdrew

His 2009 speech electrified the world when he announced "as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the US has a moral responsibility to act."

As US President Obama reshapes America's relationships in the Middle East, new equations are likely to emerge within the region and more Space will be created for China to win over the old allies of the US.

The basic purpose for Obama to have undertaken the nocturnal visit to Kabul is to show the Republicans as the misguided war mongers who thrust two wars on a nation in recession. True, Afghanistan was a war of choice but now unpopular at home. He would like to appear to be the leader who called back the troops.

Even as the United States tries to retract from being labelled the global policeman, it still cannot ignore the calls that come from being the sole superpower in the world, notwithstanding debates about its relative decline.

It might be an interesting detail for a US President who has come up the Civil Rights ladder. The role caste politics in India has played in boosting Indo-US ties in recent years.

The current US presidential campaign, which is about to come to a close, has been replete with spins disseminated by the spin-masters of President George Bush as well as Senator John Kerry.

The Afghan Election Commission has set the next presidential elections for April 5, 2014. This move has been welcomed in the country as well as by the international community as a positive development.

Though the Japanese financial aid to Myanmar was used for purposes other than serving the interests of the people, the debt should be considered odious, and waived off to free the people from the woes of the debt incurred to aid their repression.

While health outcomes have greatly improved, tribal communities still lag behind

The advent of yet another coalition regime at the Centre has suddenly raised questions about ¿coordination¿ between the party and the Government. Already there are talks of power-centres, in turn setting a bad precedent at one level, and leaving a bad taste at another.

Reports that the Centre is considering the winding up of the Task Force on the possibly over-ambitious project for the inter-linking of rivers need to be received with concern. It is nobody's case that the report, or the project, should be accepted in toto,

Whoever thought that ¿terrorising¿ the people of one¿s own country through dictatorial methods is equivalent to terrorism, as generally understood, is learning a new lesson in Iraq. With the failure to prove that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass-destruction even months after the despot¿s exit, the US is finding that to the average Iraqi, it is not a ¿liberator¿ but an ¿occupier¿.