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If Narendra Modi becomes prime minister, he will join a select band of predecessors who can be called "outliers" - a scientific term used to describe phenomena which are outside the normal experience.

In the US presidential election, dominated by domestic issues and with little focus on foreign policy, outsourcing has emerged as a point of discussion. India is one of the top countries to which the US outsource work.

Aggression may be a warning to India to not join issue with US

It is not the first time that the Pakistan army has accused the R&AW of fomenting trouble in Pakistan. India should be cautious of what lies behind this seemingly sudden provocation. The Pakistan army prepares the ground for a major attack against India and its assets by raising the pitch of allegations to whip up public support at home. This has been the case in the past, including the Mumbai attacks of 2008.

The Indian model of federalism may be one of the most interesting typologies in the world, characterised as it is by a paradox, to begin with: that of being a “centralised federalism.” This paper provides a temporal framework in the discourse on Indian federalism by outlining the history of the country’s federal structure in four different time periods, from the birth of the Indian republic to these contemporary times. It shows how the prev

The big paradox that the US confronts is the need to confront China and Russia at the same time. Clearly, even the mighty US does not have the energy and resources to do that. Beijing is, of course, quite self-confident because it is locked into the western economies and is, in that sense, sanctions proof.

There is an irony in the government's crackdown on Ford Foundation that seems to have escaped most observers. In the 1960s, the principal critics of the Foundation were the Indian Left. Now, the government and critics of foundations and NGOs fail to realise one thing. Now we are a self-confident, resilient society with institutions that have gained considerable depth. We are also a transparent and open society.

Many commentators feel that there is new awakening among the Pashtun. The Pashtun Long March and the ten-day sit-in outside the Islamabad Press Club was meant to kindle that awakening.

The affordable housing challenge plagues cities across India. Although city administrations have framed various strategies to tackle the issue, weak implementation, flawed policies, and an inherent lack of capacity to find longterm solutions have allowed slums to proliferate as an alternative. This paper examines the affordable housing issue in Greater Mumbai. Since affordability is not absolute but relative to the development stage and income di

This brief explores some of the deeper, and more troubling, effects of the pervasive spread of the logic of technology on social, cultural, and political life. The author critiques the predominant tech-utopian perspective, which frames ever further and faster technological development as critical to continuing social progress, using Neil Postman’s concept of the ‘technopoly’. The brief uses as an example the influence of the logic o

While NYAY is a great scheme on paper, it probably needs more consideration.

In 2022, the Government of India is set to introduce the new Foreign Trade Policy (FTP) that will provide direction to the country's broader trade policy regime in the succeeding five years. This FTP will be more difficult to draft than the previous ones, for various reasons including the increased global pressure to address trade policy uncertainties, the need for alignment with the self-reliance mission, Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan, and the tenu

Ahead of polls, he will seek to leverage the trip for political ends. India should stay focused on the wider agenda

Once Narendra Modi steps away from the minefield of Nepal's domestic discourse on the Hindu state, the Indian Prime Minister will find the shared Hindu and Buddhist heritage a solid foundation on which to build a new and lasting edifice of bilateral cooperation.

The simple fact is that there are no easy answer for progressives, whether in Europe, Asia or America.

Strategists in New Delhi would have to factor in that a two front confrontation with Pakistan and China cannot be ruled out. US response in this case is an uncertainty. We need to remember that in the ultimate analysis, China is the resident power and the US is a distant power.

It is easy to criticise Nehru today. His priority then, as it remains that of our country today, is to take poor Indians out of poverty and protect the country's territorial integrity. Given the circumstances, he did not do a bad job, and he did it without murdering millions as was done in China, or overturning democracy, as was the case in many countries of the time.

The real American dilemma is to find allies in Islamabad who reduce and not multiply anti Americanism

The terrorists may be an extreme minority, but they have successfully coerced the majority?or, to be more accurate, enthralled them?into sympathy for them. They have successfully also intimidated a large number of writers, artists, journalists, film-makers, many of whom live in exile.

The impact of the Kachin conflict should also be evaluated in terms of Myanmar?s ties with other nations, especially Japan ? a nation that is one of the principal aid providers and architects of Myanmar?s path to development.

His party claimed to be different from the effete government led by the Congress and its foreign policy therefore needs to be held to a higher standard.

The Modi government needs to break from traditional, statist methods of conducting water diplomacy and distinguish itself by including the concerns of basin inhabitants on both sides to find a lasting solution to the Teesta issue.

It is time to conduct a reality check on the India-Pakistan peace process. In fact, there is a particular urgency for it. For, the peace process seems to have got hijacked by secessionist elements in Kashmir and Pakistan who never had any stakes in it.

AI can be a force for good. It has emerged as one technology of particular importance because of its role as an accelerator, its versatility, and its wide applicability. But challenges include standards-setting, supply chain resilience, talent retention, and data policy

Relentless urbanisation often has a heavy environmental cost, arising from activities such as the consumption of fossil resources to fuel industrialisation and infrastructure development. The resulting surge in greenhouse gas emissions is one of the biggest contributors to climate change, which leads to frequent extreme weather events such as floods, droughts, and heatwaves. Such events pose an existential threat to human life, infrastructure, an

Qatar is creating a large footprint for itself in the West Asian Qpolitical landscape. The Gulf state was previously known primarily for its oil and gas reserves, and compliance with US interests in the region. However, Qatar has in the recent past made significant efforts to assert regional pre-eminence through an aggressive foreign policy. Emir Shaikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, who recently handed over the reins of power to his son, Tamim bin

Growing space security threats are proving to be a challenge for existing global governance measures, but consensus on new rules is proving difficult.

The Pacific theatre is now an obvious area of interest to boost non-traditional activities by the Quad countries

The President of Pakistan had expected his handpicked Prime Minister, Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali, to perform his bidding and strengthen his position. But President Musharraf was disappointed. He, therefore, felt that a change was essential in order to secure his own place and keep the other power players content.

The hunt for the rest of the killers of Bangabandhu will continue. India must give Sheikh Hasina unstinted support in this endeavour

¿Arise, ye Arabs, and awake!¿ was the seditious 19th century slogan of Arab nationalism in its infancy. It aroused them against the Ottoman rule but did not hinder the subsequent imperial designs of Britain and France. The moment of liberation became the start of newer forms of dominance.

The proximate political failures in both these cases are greater than in 2012, and require a more robust political response

As the threat of inflation returns, the Fed and others adjust their messages - why not the RBI?

It is well known that Xi Jinping is an avid reader because his speeches have often used quotes from Dickens, Victor Hugo and Paul Coelho. The very choice of the books has a meaning.

By organising the two-day Lahore convention through Hafiz Sayeed and his Jihadi organizations of LeT and JuD, Pakistan wants to demonstrate that the people of Pakistan are not happy with the way the events have taken place in Kashmir.

It was evident at some of the various Track 2 dialogues a few years ago, where water from Kashmir was the issue that Pakistani delegates wanted to discuss saying that this could become the new flashpoint. Actually, water from rivers that flow through Kashmir has always been the real issue for Pakistan and not Kashmiris or their religion.

Once the US successfully built and used nuclear weapons to devastating effect to end the Second World War, other great powers of the time realized that the acquisition of nuclear weapons was essential to maintain their status. In 1970, after three decades of hectic developments,

The first part of this effort documented the various acts of omission and commission by the non-proliferation ayatollahs that led to the 1998 nuclear weapons testing of India, followed by Pakistan. However, the stark reality of the consequences of the dubious policies adopted by the NPAs towards Pakistani and Chinese proliferation came to light recently in the exposé of the Pakistan¿s ¿nuclear father¿ Dr.A.Q.Khan and his nuclear smuggling rin

Iraq is back in the headlines, loaded with euphoria. The electoral exercise has been undertaken; the results have yet to be announced. The running commentary on CNN on January 30 tended to suggest a near perfect exercise. No mention of course was made of the invasion, the occupation, the Iraqi dead, the reduction of Iraq to a stone-age condition, the falsehood of the pretext for war and the failure to find traces of weapons of mass destruction

Afghanistan fell to the Taliban in August last year and since then, serious security concerns have arisen for India. There is the spectre of terrorist groups in neighbouring countries gaining strength; there is also the threat of Indians travelling to Afghanistan to either live as civilians desiring a home under “Islamic rule”, or else fight alongside terrorist groups. Indeed, other South Asian countries such as Bangladesh are reporting that

In the past six weeks, attacks on merchant ships have become increasingly common, and regional navies are struggling to keep up

At some point in the near future, everyone will have a smart digital device. The new digital divide will be of those with access to interactive digital content and those without.

Like the proverbial phoenix of Greek mythology that rose from its ashes, the Taliban is resurrecting in Afghanistan. The good news is that the ¿rising Taliban¿, on the one hand, is supposed to be moderate, and on the other hand, seems to have severed its links with Al Qaeda. The bad news is that it is still the Taliban.

The elections of this motley crew, with their limited interest in liberalism, has been dubbed the ‘rise of the right’ across the world.

As the global debate on the Chinese model, and especially its domestic political system intensifies, there is a tendency to regard the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as a monolith. This paper corrects such a view and argues that any attempt to comprehend elite politics in China requires an understanding of the factional dynamics within the party. The paper outlines the evolution of factional politics in China, and shows how two factions – the Sh

The Modi-led government is placing a strong accent on the use of soft power in India’s foreign policy. One of the more novel manifestations of these initiatives has been engagement in Buddhist diplomacy. The Buddhist faith, due to its emphasis on peaceful co-existence and its wide pan-Asian presence, lends itself well to soft-power diplomacy. This brief will examine India’s attempts at leveraging its historical and present-day associations wi