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As the annual Shangri La Dialogue in Singapore begins this week, Indian Defence Minister will not be present for the meeting suggesting that the tone of disinterest in Asian defence diplomacy set by the previous government appears to continue.

India may have a geopolitical interest in the South China Sea area, but it is driven by an economic need. India must make its presence felt and pursue its engagements in the area. This in turn will involve a continued effort to cooperate and collaborate with the Southeast Asian nations.

The foreign policy of the Modi government is the continuation of the foreign policies introduced by the Manmohan Singh government, whose hallmark was the concrete decision to link India's economic transformation and growth of India with its foreign policy approach and objectives, says Dr. Shashi Tharoor.

New Delhi must stand committed to its rhetoric on the Freedom of Navigation (FON) and to defend its interests should the need arise. This in turn would involve deepening naval cooperation with the key countries of the ASEAN and major powers sharing India's interest in defending the principle of FON.

Advani's most memorable quote: "You were asked only to bend, but you crawled" holds good today, as much as it did in 1975. Through the UPA regime, it was manifested in the absence of criticism of Sonia Gandhi, and now it is in the free ride that Narendra Modi gets.

Modi does it again.

India and China should begin a full-fledged dialogue on water resources in order to address the suspicion that China is diverting river water away from India, according to former Union Minister Jairam Ramesh.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's forthcoming visit to Japan for the annual summit comes at a time when both countries are faced with serious territorial frictions with China. Mr Singh and his Japanese counterpart Mr. Shinzo Abe will review China's assertive maritime postures and other major developments in East Asia.

After the attacks, which killed more than 250 people, making it one of the most successful pro-ISIS attacks anywhere, information was leaked out to the Indian press that New Delhi shared intelligence with Colombo of an impending attack of similar nature.

Farooq Sobhan, President of the Bangladesh Enterprise Institute and former Foreign Secretary of Bangladesh, addressed the ORF Faculty on March 12, 2008. In his speech, he stressed on building a strong relationship between India and Bangladesh by encouraging greater connectivity and investments. Both countries, he felt, should leave behind the baggage of mistrust and neglect and recognise that they can gain much through a closer relationship.

The use of past to pitch present-day India-China interaction is not a very helpful strategy because the situations, political entities were different and the role of Buddhism was more complex than acknowledged, according to Dr. Tansen Sen of the City University New York.

In the backdrop of Chinese President Hu Jintao's visit to India, a roundtable discussion was organized by ORF on 1 December 2006 to assess the outcome of the visit and its impact on the relations between the two countries. The discussion focused on how India-China relationship will evolve in the wake of the visit.

India has seldom been demanding on strategic issues. At the strategic level, one requires a long memory and a longer foresight and vision. With China, we need to balance our strategic, security and economic relationships.

By broadening the scope of bilateral cooperation from the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) to encompass the entire Indo-Pacific region, the India-France Indo-Pacific Roadmap, released in July 2023, underscores the importance of moving beyond the traditional self-centred approach to foster a more outward-looking dynamic with key regional partners. The cooperative trilateral mechanisms established by India and France in 2020 (India-France-Australia) and i

India and Iran are not in the place they deserve to be in the global order, and they can play a more important and significant role by enhancing their cooperation, according to Mr. Ali Akbar Javanfekr, presidential advisor for press affairs to Mr. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the President of Iran.

His Excellency Mr. Akitaka Saiki, Ambassador of Japan to India, addressed an eminent gathering at the ORF campus in New Delhi on June 29, 2011. In his lecture, Mr. Saiki outlined the huge potential for cooperation between India and Japan to build a strong partnership in the context of the rapidly changing security dynamics in the Asia-Pacific region. This is the text of his lecture and the proceedings of the event.

India's Look East policy, launched in 1991, has made steady progress in widening its economic and strategic reach to Japan and South Korea. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's recent visit to South Korea should be seen in the expanding context of India's Look East Policy.

India and Thailand have long-standing civilisational ties shaped by centuries of cultural and commercial interaction. Despite the establishment of diplomatic relations in 1947, bilateral cooperation between them gained real momentum only after the Cold War, driven by shifting regional dynamics and deeper integration into multilateral forums. In recent years, mutual initiatives such as India’s “Act East” and Thailand’s “Act West” polic

The race for the 'Rashtrapati Bhavan' (President's House) has begun in right earnest though no political party has yet played its cards formally. A new President is going to be elected in two months as the term of the present President Smt. Pratibha Devi Singh Patil ends on July 25.

Left-wing extremists in India are gaining in strength and spreading their reach to newer and hitherto unheard of regions. The guerrillas have been carefully and consistently planning strategies to survive in their bastions, consolidate themselves in regions of moderate presence and expand their activities to new areas.

India needs to find money to put into strategic investments and projects across the IOR -- whether it is Myanmar, Iran, Sri Lanka or Mauritius. The way to do it is not governmental schemes which are all running late, but to draw strength from India's entrepreneurial class and the private sector.

The monsoon session of Parliament began on Monday August 1, 2011. The eigth session of the 15th Lok Sabha (Lower House) and the 223rd session of Rajya Sabha (Upper House) are expected to produce more legislative business compared to the performance of the two Houses in the recent past.

Prof. S.D. Muni, a Sri Lankan expert, says that it was unlikely that the 13th Amendment would be implemented, but the spirit of the amendment, i.e., accommodation, would play a much larger role relative to Rajapaksa's rule.

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, extremist groups find workarounds to the digital blockade as ordinary citizens endure restricted access

While Non-Congress parties spare no opportunity to accuse the Congress Party of psychophancy and a feudal culture, regional parties are not far behind. In fact, they have perfected the art of dynastic politics, beating the Congress Party.

UK's Deputy High Commissioner in Chennai, Mr Bharat Joshi, has said that Indian investments in the UK have created over 5000 jobs while UK investments in Chennai alone have generated several thousands.

In the past decade, India has successfully demonstrated the three pillars of effective deterrence—capability, credibility, and communication—in its strategic posture towards China. It has bolstered its defence diplomacy with key partners in South Asia and Southeast Asia, and across the broader Indo-Pacific region, through regular joint military exercises, military officers exchange programmes, frequent high-level diplomatic visits, and the co

The role of legitimacy in India’s approach to the doctrine of the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P) and Humanitarian Interventions (HIs) has not received as much attention as it is due. The following paper evaluates India’s evolving views on R2P and HIs through the prism of legitimacy. It also demonstrates why the outcome of an HI, whether through the medium of the R2P or otherwise, matters as much as motives. Most Indian debates about R2

New Delhi has the chance to shape the global agenda and advocate for its vision of multilateralism.

Think20, the ideas bank of G20, will engage with the gamut of issues – strategic, economic and structural – that confront all countries

India introduced its e-tourist visa (eTV) policy in November 2014. Despite initially impressive results in terms of increased arrivals, there is no indication that such modest success will create a significant impact on tourism, or prove to be sustainable in the long run. This paper finds that the policy’s very design-and the various weaknesses in its modalities-make it less attractive to travelers, compared to the ‘traditional’ tourist

Lines of Credit (LOCs) are a widely used instrument in development cooperation, including for India. The projects funded by India’s LOCs attempt to achieve a trinity of objectives: economic benefits; effective project management and completion; and nurturing and enhancing diplomatic relationship and strategic interests with the partner countries. This brief explains how India’s LOCs function, and contextualises the performance of the

Evidence suggests the Maoists have their back against the wall. India can take a leaf from the successful negotiation by the Columbia govt and FARC.

The security of nuclear and radiological materials is a critical global issue due to the growing number of existing and emerging threats in the nuclear domain. Within the broad domain of nuclear security, several challenges and threats—such as the physical protection of nuclear materials, insider threat, transportation security, and cyber threats—have raised concerns among governments and the international community. This report focuses on th

New Delhi is increasingly positioning itself as a significant player in African peace, security and development. Examining the question of how India responds to state fragility in Africa, this brief finds that India’s engagement is mostly transactional: working around, rather than on, sources of political fragility. Development and security interventions tend to operate in silos, but might change if Indian commercial investments are threatened

The two countries need to pause and think through every step they take, lest they get caught in an unending cycle of conflict.

The SCO meet exemplified a nuanced balancing act between India and China — cooperation where feasible, vigilance where imperative

India’s emerging urban moment is caught between two realities: inadequate systems in public transportation, housing, waste management, and access to sanitation and health; and a burgeoning ecosystem of enterprising individuals, communities and start-ups pushing innovative solutions to these very same civic issues. This paper examines India’s urban picture and understands how the urban narrative of crumbling systems and inadequate infrastructu