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India has nurtured good relations with Israel, Saudi Arabia, UAE & Bahrain, and will gain from peace in West Asia.

From the Chinese perspective, it was a smart move to invite India to join the maritime Silk Road project. But Delhi is likely to be torn between two competing ideas ? working with China in the maritime domain and the long-standing goal of limiting Beijing's influence in the Indian Ocean.

The question of inviting Australia to the exercise, which currently includes India, Japan and the United States, has been controversial.

New Delhi will be hoping that Congress can continue to rein in Trump’s worst instincts.

While India-Japan relations have strengthened and trade volume has jumped over by 38% from the previous year, in the civil nuclear cooperation, Japan observers see a rather serious barrier in the strong anti-reactor backlash at home, keeping it away from striking an acceptable solution.

The visit of Begum Khaleda Zia to New Delhi, her first visit as the Opposition leader, suggests a change in the thinking of her party, BNP. And it is likely to turn into a major breakthrough in the India-Bangladesh relations, marking a new beginning in the relations.

In a first of the kind, Observer Research Foundation, Kolkata organised an inter-university debate competition on 'Panchsheel and its Relevance' on January 17 to commemorate completion of 60 years of signing the agreement.

It definitely was not in the scheme, but the 'Oxford Union episode' involving Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa may have emboldened the demoralised nation's pan-Tamil Diaspora across the West, with its fallout expected to be felt in neighbouring India as well.

The 9th India-Japan bilateral is taking place in New Delhi this week-end. PM Abe is reaching Delhi on December 11. Two of the main issues that need to be resolved to take the partnership to new heights are the civil nuclear agreement and the supply of Japan's indigenously made US2 amphibious aircraft to India. Will Abe and Modi be able to achieve this?

New Delhi is correct to be cautious about the effects of the Masood Azhar listings.

While the establishment of new Integrated Check Post at Attari is a welcome move, there are certain issues which have dampened the spirits of Punjab's traders. The Pakistan government has still not allowed trade of items freely from the Attari-Wagah land route despite it being the cheapest and shortest trade route.

International tension surrounding Iran is yet to affect India, but New Delhi can make tactical gains by maintaining diplomatic flexibility.

From India’s perspective, Israel and the UAE are undoubtedly our two closest friends in the Middle East. PM Modi has invested considerable energy in developing both relationships and they have stood by our side when we have needed their support. Normalisation of ties between them augurs well for us, opening up exciting new possibilities for collaboration.

The decade that began on January 1 will be Africa's decade. Unprecedented opportunities are opening up for India-Africa cooperation in Africa's rise in several areas, notably higher education, industrialisation and agriculture.

New Delhi (and Beijing) have limited leverage over regional matters in West Asia.

A collective of broadly democratic middle powers are learning to work with each other without the certainty of American facilitation.

The politics of India is changing. The change will come not just through macro measures like the introduction of large-scale manufacturing or modern agriculture, but in a number of small ways - better schools, safer cities, better urban facilities, mental institutions and jails, fairer purvey of justice and so on.

An increasing number of startups and new businesses have been founded in India over the last decade, the majority of them by men. While many Indian women have entrepreneurial ambitions, it is often more difficult for them to succeed. This brief examines the impediments to greater participation of female founders in India’s economy by first gathering available data to describe the situation of women entrepreneurs in the country. It then explores

Gender disparities in economic participation and opportunities remain significantly large across the world. To bridge these gaps, G20 countries are working to advance women’s entrepreneurship through financial assistance, knowledge creation, and governance for supporting enterprise. India, in particular, has introduced a number of government schemes to promote entrepreneurship among women, such as the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana and the Prad

Women’s representation in India’s Parliament is an important metric to evaluate progress in bridging gender inequities in the country. India has a female population of 662.9 million and is the largest and one of the most resilient parliamentary democracies in the world. As the country completes 75 years of independence, this paper gives a historical account of the progress in women’s representation in Parliament over the past decades. It co

The Congress has been suffering from a steady breakdown in ideological clarity for decades, evident in its confusion over secularism, appeasement politics, even Pakistan. It is now paying the price.

The world sees India as not contributing positively to the international trade negotiations and this makes it difficult for India to actively participate in ongoing major plurilateral trade negotiations, according to Dr. Harsha Vardhana Singh, India's former DDG to WTO.

If the world rapidly forgot about the Indian role in the Second World War, independent India did a lot worse. Its political leaders trivialised the war by dismissing it a colonial enterprise. Seventy years later, the time has come for political India to put the war in its proper historical context and celebrate the extraordinary contributions of the Indian people.

A deterrent to no war between India and Pakistan: Nuclear Weapons

To be relevant, the WTO cannot keep postponing handling the major sticking points. It has to fulfill its agenda of ending rich country farm subsidies and tackle issues like rules governing intellectual property rights - things that regional FTAs are already dealing with.

New Delhi has no choice but to deftly manage Sino-Indian relations.

As Xi and Modi meet in first Ahmedabad and then in New Delhi, India has political and strategic issues that it will want China to respond to - the contested border and territorial issues, China-Pakistan cooperation on nuclear, missile, maritime and border infrastructure issues.

Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit and accompanying independent agreements with Maldives and Sri Lanka, on undefined maritime issues and cooperation, have the potential for causing greater concern not only in India, but in the shared neighbourhood and beyond.

The Observer Research Foundation first conceptualised the foreign policy survey last year to build on the existing strand of polling research in India. In December 2020, the poll sampled 2,037 Indians aged 18-35 from 14 cities

With the aim of bringing together some of the brightest young minds working on various issues of national and international importance, Observer Research Foundation has initiated a forum called the Young Voices Policy Forum.

In common discourse on extremism, it is widely thought that the poor and unschooled are most easily recruited to militant organisations. Today, however, an increasing number of young professionals are embracing extremism. Is this true for India? If such a pattern is indeed present, what threats does it pose to India?

When Dr. Manmohan Singh and Mr. Asif Ali Zardari meet in New Delhi on Sunday, they could productively focus on two important themes - one, looking at a number of agreements that could be clinched in the next few months. Two, to set a date for Dr. Singh's visit to Pakistan.

After Confidence Building Measures (CBMs) on India-Pakistan borders having almost failed, may be, hopefully, the high-profile pilgrimage of President Asif ali Zardari will play a role in making the visits of not-so-high profile ones less arduous and cumbersome.

India’s eastern subregions form its first geostrategic chain in the Indo-Pacific region. They have emerged as key strategic spaces for New Delhi to push forward its ‘Act East’ policy. As new opportunities open up, the evolving challenges warrant New Delhi to frame a regional strategy that focuses on the subregions as one single strategic arch. 

India has a long history of nurturing a social welfare regime whereby material goods are distributed to the poor and vulnerable populations of the country, helping uplift their socio-economic condition. However, many of such welfare goods are often called ‘hand-outs’ or ‘freebies’ that are promised or delivered based on electoral considerations; they are widely viewed as manipulative, aimed only at influencing electorates. The mas

Government advisory committees come with implicit constraints to stay within the limits of what is politically doable.