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While the common man or woman has to save for hard times and cut corners on everything, the same is not happening to the budgets of the Central and state governments.

The 2625 kg GSAT-7, developed at a cost of INR 185 crores, will be India's first dedicated satellite for maritime communications, providing UHF, S-band, C-band, and Ku band relay capacity over the Indian landmass and surrounding seas.

From a strategic perspective, the successful launch of the GSLV means India is self-reliant in the area of satellite launching, including heavier satellites. This also means that India will not have to depend on foreign agencies to carry their heavier payloads.

Discussions between the American Foreign Policy Council (AFPC) and the Observer Research Foundation (ORF) also saw a general agreement that the Taliban victory in Afghanistan will lead to a civil war with disastrous consequences for Pakistan

If it is any yardstick for a vibrant democracy, India today has six former Prime Ministers around. Only two of them, namely, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and P V Narasimha Rao completed a full term, and thus became mascots of political stability in their time. Yet, subsequent elections proved that stability was not the only concern of the Indian voter. To him, political stability is a vehicle for his deliverance and in ways he understands.

NEW DELHI, AUGUST 7, 2008: Mr. Inder Kumar Gujral, former Prime Minister of India, on Thursday released a book on "Small States Security Dilemma: A Maldivian Perception" at Observer Research Foundation.

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) was formed in 1981 to counter the emerging threat from an ideological rival, Iran. While it has served the purpose of keeping the GCC countries together over the decades, the changing regional dynamics are raising questions over its continued relevance in its present form. The Hamas terror attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 and the consequent Gaza war has led to irreversible changes, Israel and Iran have engaged

While India's economic presence in the Gulf region has transformed from merely an exchanges between merchants and human capital, as a geopolitical player, India's role has remained subdued.

Will President Obama's passionate call for stricter gun laws from the pulpit bring any change, or will he go towards the sunset in 2016 with having done practically nothing on this issue?

The story began on March 18th, when Pakistan¿s leader Gen. Pervez Musharraf casually mentioned in an interview with CNN¿s Aaron Brown that it is likely that Pakistani troops have surrounded a ¿High Value Target¿ in the tribal ¿agency¿ of South Waziristan. Some enterprising Pakistani ¿intelligence official¿ leaked to the eager

Of all the reasons, there is one reason why the world must pay immediate attention to what is happening in Balochistan. Here, a military dictator ruling without any political legitimacy for more than five years has now launched an ethnic cleansing which, to say the least, is colossally retrogressive and inhuman.

With the Chinese refusal to take charge of the operations at Pakistan's Gwadar Port and a series of handicaps and security issues, this facility may fail to achieve its intended target of building it into a strategic asset.

In 2006, then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh named  Maoist insurgency as “the single biggest internal-security challenge”[i] the country has ever faced. He would repeat the same warning in the succeeding four years.[ii] This paper argues  that today, the insurgency no longer poses the same degree of threat to the Indian state. It outlines the trajectory of the Maoist insurgency from its roots in the late 1960s, to credible domination over

The author, who was part of the ORF delegation which took part in discussions with Chinese party and government officials, says that the possibilities for India and China to collaborate must transcend boundary disputes and other age-old issues.

The Haqqani Act of the US Congress, and last week's decision in the US Senate to delay the confirmation of a new US ambassador to Kabul, are now adding to the pressure on the State Department. The next few weeks are likely to see intense parleys between Washington and Rawalpindi to find a way to delay.

As the Year 2005 draws to a close, it is worthwhile to find out where are we today on the path of reconciliation with Pakistan? Is there a process to the peace?

Professional diplomats will find little that is new or startling in the Wikileaks cables. For them the quality and content of reporting in the leaked cables is quite standard fare. Transmitting to Headquarters information gleaned from contacts, assessing its worth,

Given the need to prioritise growth in the developing world, the goals must be 'development-climate compatible,' not, 'climate-development compatible', according to Dr. Youba Sokona, coordinator, African Climate Policy Centre (ACPC) based in the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa.

The thaw in the India-Pak relations has opened a new window of opportunity. In the first stage, it will assist in India hosting the Heart of Asia conference next year and may also lead to a fruitful visit by Modi to Islamabad for the SAARC Summit.

Overall, the infrastructure sector is the winner in this year's budget. The allocation to the sector will go up by 700 bn rupees in 2015/16 over last year. But this sector needs consolidation in policy framework starting from approval to implementation and an institutional mechanism for fair pricing and competition.

Bangladesh's bilateral relations with India got a major boost with its Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's visit to Tripura on January 11 and 12. Sheikh Hasina visited the north-eastern Indian State to attend the convocation of the Tripura Central University at Agartala.

It has been a year since the Galwan clashes in Ladakh that led to the deaths of 20 Indians and 5 Chinese soldiers.

President Barack Obama's State of the Union address to the US Congress begins with America's recent military engagement in self congratulatory terms. Among the more modest claims is: "For the first time in two decades, Osama bin Laden is not a threat to this country".

ORF Chennai chapter pays tribute to R K Mishra, Chairman of the Observer Research Foundation.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused unprecedented stress on India’s urban public health infrastructure, underscoring the need for urban planning to account for increased demand for health amenities during crises. This paper evaluates the city of Mumbai’s 1991 and 2034 development plans and finds inherent infrastructural inadequacies. It calls on urban-policymakers to complement development plans with robust dynamic health strategies that conside

Public health is identified by BIMSTEC member countries as one among its fourteen priority areas for cooperation. Such collaborations, however, have been limited around traditional medicine. This year’s launch of the JIPMER-BIMSTEC Telemedicine Network (JBTN) which combines public health, communication, and technology, is bound to change the status quo. In per-capita terms, three BIMSTEC members are wealthier than India, while three are poorer.

The BIMSTEC and East Africa, which together account for 25 percent of the world’s population, are low-resource regions.[1] While their share in the global disease burden is disproportionately high, their combined healthcare expenditure is a minuscule share of the global healthcare spend. Their health systems are underfunded, understaffed and ill-equipped to deal with the monumental challenge of disease burden. This paper aims to compare the he

Schemes have been announced — though how they’ll work is a mystery.

The story doing the rounds in Delhi is that in another exhibition of generosity, India is about to withdraw from the Saltoro Ridge (commonly referred to as the Siachen Glacier) in the interest of peace, but without securing the country¿s strategic interests.

If Hindu extremism prevails, India will have little to give the world and be in no mood to learn. Unless the PM acts now to check these negative forces, Modi and the agenda for India could end up being a minor part of the vast collateral damage.

At a roundtable on the situation in Bangladesh, experts underlined the need for ensuring a credible election in Bangladesh for the country's stability and the strengthening of India-Bangladesh relations.

If internecine clashes in the eastern Afghan city of Herat are a sign of the things to come, peaceful political evolution of the country seems to be a messy affair. Around 50 people had been killed in those clashes that continued for eight hours in one of the more stable cities of Afghanistan.

Young Indians are ambitious and show greater autonomy in their career decisions.

In Delhi, the Army still honours its martyrs in the airport parking lot as, ostensibly due to security concerns, it doesn't have access to the reception area built last year.

West Bengal Governor M.K. Narayanan thinks that India must carve out an area of influence for herself as China has made it clear that it is not going to restrict itself to Western Pacific, and so, there is high likelihood that China will come into the Indian Ocean because of its interest in oil.

It is becoming increasingly clear that a resolution to the Kashmir dispute cannot be delayed much longer if the peace process between India and Pakistan is to yield tangible results in the foreseeable future. This period cannot be longer than five years.

It is time that the Modi Government carried out a comprehensive assessment of our internal security structures and put in place measures to enhance their efficacy. Also, the feasibility of the earlier proposal by the army for permitting lateral movement of its personnel into the CAPF needs to be re-examined.

The government has to free India's top 50 institutions across all disciplines from the iron grip of UGC and AICTE. The institutions must be given the freedom to devise their own course curriculum. After all they have the best subject experts.

Clinton's India visit was only moderately successful with not much progress on nuclear liability issues and Afghanistan. But the good thing is that both countries are talking out their differences, showing their commitment to taking this mutually-beneficial partnership to a new high.

Nepal's relationship with China has historical links and thus is not new. Their first recorded official engagement dates back to the middle of the seventh century when Nepal's adventurism in Tibet led to Chinese intervention in favour of the latter.