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Nepalese Prime Ministers generally prefer to call on New Delhi for their first foreign visit after assuming office. The urgency for Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba's visit was, however, accentuated by nearly a week-long effective blockade of Kathmandu imposed by the Maoist insurgents.

India and the countries of Africa share common challenges in their education systems, among them, weak teacher capacities and lack of basic infrastructure. In India, technological interventions have been able to address some of the challenges at scale. Africa has met with less success in this regard, as governments prioritise the provision of hardware without addressing the systemic issues that hamper the adoption of such technologies. Cu

Leaving Moscow to engage with North Korea may also free China of the burden of having to justify its relations with North Korea in light of Beijing’s increasing business interests with the West

The presence and influence of the Naxalites are increasing dramatically and rapidly in various parts of the country while we remain engaged in endless debates on how to address the problem.

As part of a three-year research project undertaken by ORF and PRIO to study and analyse urban governance, urban security and environment related trends and concerns in selected regions of India, an international conference was organised on "Emerging Challenges in an Urbanising India: Governance, Security and Climate Change".

With Al Qaeda far from being vanquished, and Pakistan and Bangladesh inevitably turning into jihadi outposts in the emerging pan-Islamist network in Asia, India is more than likely to be caught in the vicious tail-wind of the next wave of terrorism, gathering momentum since 9/11.

This paper theorises international relations using the perspective of an Indian classic, Kautilya’s Arthashastra, and employs such interpretation to conceptualise BRICS (or the association of emerging economies, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.) As a litmus test for the analytical viability of the Kautilyan perspective developed here, the paper examines what might be called “the BRICS paradox”: the mismatch between theoretical

A single deft move in the 18th century secured the British empire in India many advantages over the advancing Russians. By sending five English dray horses along with a blue velvet upholstered coach to Maharaja Ranjit Singh in Lahore, upstream from Kutch, the British discovered that the Indus was navigable all the way up.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has already made inroads into healthcare. The increasing availability of healthcare data has allowed for the deployment of powerful AI techniques to assist drug development as well as clinical practice. These run the gamut from machine learning (ML) techniques that analyse structured data, to natural language processing (NLP) that can extract meaningful information from unstructured data, such as doctors’ notes. Thi

In the Indian context, the term, ‘Special Operations Forces’ (SOF) refers to all those forces that are especially selected, organised, trained and equipped for tasks that have an impact at the strategic level and are beyond the remit of conventional forces. India’s uncoordinated response to the January 2016 terrorist attacks on the 1 Pathankot Air Force base has again trained the spotlight on the issues of tasking, synergy and ‘jointnes

It were thousands of village pradhans who had to be "empowered" as the nodal points most in contact with the people. Legislators and policy makers have to develop institutional mechanisms to liaise with the Pradhans who implement policy at the village level.

Control of China through cooperation could be a more effective policy given the size and closed nature of China's society

With the Opposition-dominated Parliament passing the Judges Bill and the Government coming up with a consensus list of seven Supreme Court Judges that too was passed, there is now hope about an early end to the constitutional deadlock that had engulfed Maldives over the past weeks.

India is the third largest coal producer and the coal industry one of the oldest sectors of commercial involvement

With the death of brigand Veerappan in a police encounter in Tamil Nadu's Dharmapuri district, a long and arodous era in criminality has come to an end in this part of India - nay, even the world. Not many criminals in the world in these modern times would have scalped 130 human victims, apart from the hundreds of elephants and thousands of sandalwood trees to his credit as Veerappan did.

Pakistan is living through turbulent times and, General Musharraf, its self-styled President, is under tremendous pressure. The United States-led anti-terrorism campaign in Afghanistan has shaken Pakistan's polity like no other event in its troubled history.

After improving between 2000 and 2013, hunger levels have significantly worsened in Africa in the years since. While global food insecurity is currently at an all-time high, Africa's record in addressing undernutrition was not impressive even in the pre-pandemic era when growth rates were higher. There are several challenges to food security in Africa, including short-term external shocks such as the pandemic and the Ukraine-Russia war, and long-

A talk by Prof Dilip Ahuja and Prof D P Sen Gupta

To meet its poverty eradication, human and economic development targets, India will require much greater availability of energy. Poverty eradication is critical for building resilience to potential climate impacts.

India and Russia have an agreement to build 12 nuclear plans in the next two decades.

Energy: Power Ministry plans to shut coal-fired power plants with capacity of about 8000 MW.

Pricing formula for domestic natural gas could not have been more wrong and other weekly energy roundups

OC, BPCL and HPCL reported to have plans to spend $20 billion on refinery expansions to process fuel oil into gasoline and diesel and other energy roundups

How can Japan bring in energy reforms with its weak political structures, a very strong nuclear lobby that can influence policymaking, and rising public discontent? Japan has seen five Prime Ministers in the last five years.

The Modi government's biggest challenge is battling a legacy of distrust. The dominant political discourse in India remains deeply suspicious of market liberalization.

Fourteen years ago, in 1996, Dr Vijay Kelkar, one of my distinguished predecessors in the long list of luminaries who have delivered this Lecture, said, "What petroleum was to the 20th century, natural gas will be to the 21st."

The increasing demand for mobility and the rising rates of motorisation in India have substantially increased energy consumption and carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions from the road transport sector. As of 2021, road transport was responsible for 14 percent of the nation’s total energy consumption, 92 percent of transport-related energy demand, and 94 percent of transport-related CO₂ emissions. In 2021, India committed to net-zero carbon emissi

Waste-to-energy projects in India have historically been city-centric. As cities are well-served by LPG and CNG distribution systems, the Bio-CNG produced has to be used for either fuelling urban public transport, or moved to rural areas at considerable cost. Distributed production and distribution of compressed biogas (CBG) from municipal organic waste in rural and peri-urban areas could be a cheaper option for local consumers. Such prod

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states have seen strong and accelerating progress in the energy transition, driven primarily by economic more than environmental factors. The adoption of low-carbon energy, including nuclear, renewables and batteries, has been most prominent in the electricity sector. Most of the Gulf countries have set net-zero carbon targets and all have renewable and hydrogen production targets in place as well. A key objecti

Formulating a policy towards China that finds the right balance between engagement and resistance is not easy. We are obliged to engage with China as it is fast on the road to becoming the world's number two power.

The importance of today's Africa for India is self-evident. India's ambitions of being a global power cannot be achieved without the support of the African continent consisting of 55 countries. Nowhere is the importance of African countries felt more than on the issue of the expansion of the UN Security Council.

SAARC remains the only viable vehicle for South Asian integration, a project vital for India because a viable South Asian economy is a necessary pre-condition for our ability to engage effectively with ASEAN and China. And when we look at SAARC, the key hurdle it must overcome is the India-Pakistan problem.

An international conference on "Engaging with a resurgent Africa" was organised in New Delhi on 20th and 21st of November. It was organised jointly by Observer Research Foundation and Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung of Germany.

London is the most unequal city in the developed world, with its richest 10 percent more than 100 times better off than the poorest ten. London's wealth inequalities are said to be approaching those that "have not been seen since the days of the slave-owning elite."

India and Pakistan can reap multiple benefits from an enhanced cooperation on the economic and energy fronts, according to experts at a recent conference at Observer Research Foundation.

This brief discusses the challenges faced by urban local bodies (ULBs) in India in accessing urban climate finance (UCF), and proposes solutions based on successful strategies used by some of them. The hurdles include institutional barriers and limited capacity. The brief finds that ULBs that have met with success in accessing UCF overcame the obstacles through early sensitisation programmes and global network connections. It offers plausible sol

The Indo-Pacific region is becoming the world's new strategic and economic ‘centre of gravity’. Indeed, the accelerated trajectory of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) in recent years highlights the region’s growing importance. The Quad countries have committed to a rules-based order and a free and open Indo-Pacific, and are aiming to develop resilience across domains, such as in the maritime space, to counter and deter aggressive

An enormous amount of capital is required for climate change mitigation and adaptation globally, but especially in emerging markets that have the dual burden of achieving development and meeting national climate goals in the coming decades. Although it is tough to estimate the precise amount of capital required to achieve these goals, it is anticipated to be in the range of trillions of dollars. However, the flow of capital into green sec