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In 1990, after the end of the Cold War and the unification of Germany, the United States of America gave an assurance to the Soviet Union that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization would not expand its role beyond the borders of Germany.

Can China slow down without imploding? No, says Mr. Osamu Tanaka, the Executive Vice President of the Policy Research Institute of the Ministry of Finance, Japan. He predicts that 2017/8 will be the beginning of a Chinese financial meltdown.

It offers a notable contrast that India’s ties with Russia haven’t taken off despite New Delhi’s keenness while its relationship with the US has expanded notwithstanding hesitations.

An autonomous Judicial Commission can effectively nudge the judicial system towards its intended Constitutional mandate; apolitical, enlightened and efficient application of the rule of law and protection of the fundamental rights of private entities, against encroachment by the executive or the legislature.

The recent terrorist attacks in China's Xinjiang and the involvement of terrorist camps operating in Waziristan and nearby areas have raised serious questions about Pakistan's commitment to battle terrorist groups.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping have just made back to back visits to the United States. In keeping with the times, both began their tours from that Mecca of our age - Silicon Valley.

At the current rate of around thirty-four billion tons of CO2 emissions per year, we could exhaust our carbon budget in less than a decade

Emissions from fossil fuel-powered motor vehicles adversely affect air quality and contribute to global warming. The manufacture and use of electric vehicles (EVs) is among the ways by which this challenge can be mitigated. This brief evaluates the best practices adopted by countries in the forefront of EV adoption, and outlines the lessons India can draw from them to inform its own EVs strategy. It finds that in addition to strengthening

The convergence of Military-Civil Fusion (MCF) and the Global Development Initiative (GDI) can serve as a strategic enabler for China to accelerate its geopolitical dominance and realise its ‘Middle Kingdom Dream’ by 2049. By embedding dual-use technologies into development projects, China effectively expands the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) logistical reach, strengthens cyber capabilities, and promotes state-controlled governance mod

The IMF estimates that State-Owned Enterprise (SOE) assets totalled US$45 trillion in 2018, close to 50% of the global GDP, and calculated the debt of the largest SOEs to be US$7.4 trillion. Clearly, SOEs have a direct bearing on the global economy. The most systemically important SOEs are the State-Owned Multinational Enterprises (SOMNEs) since they are focused on cross-border financing and business. A global framework for regula

Global health diplomacy, once a cornerstone of soft power and international cooperation, stands at a crossroads. Recent upheavals – such as the US retreat from the World Health Organization – are challenging its role. Amid geopolitical tensions and biological threats, Lakshmy Ramakrishnan explores why global health diplomacy remains indispensable, and how rising powers like China and India can reshape the landscape

Health policy is classically associated with the allocation of resources for healthcare services and the affordability and effectiveness of interventions, and is thereby confined to national strategies. Over the last couple of decades, however, there has been growing awareness about the interlinkages of health policy with key aspects of international relations, including diplomacy, trade, and foreign policy. Similarly, health features as a promin

In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, reforming the global health governance system has become a key area of concern for the G20 and other multilateral platforms. This comes at a time when the world has increasingly become volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. As a grouping of developed and developing countries, the G20 must prioritise addressing global health challenges by identifying its direct and indirect determinants. This brief

What should be India's approach towards the international internet governance discourse? This Issue Brief attempts answer this question by examining the Indian government's engagement with the global community, using the recently concluded NETmundial conference on internet governance as a case study. It also provides policy recommendations for the way forward.

The All Party Hurriyat Conference¿s rather studied acceptance of the Centre¿s offer of talks while welcome should also add to the seriousness of the peace process in Jammu and Kashmir. While distancing Pakistan from a process that had been trilateral in the past formulations of the Hurriyat, the current round would expect the Centre to go beyond traditional pulse-feeling, and gestures.

The Power sector reforms in the country have presented the next strategic challenge that could redefine global interest in India. The country has set an ambitious target of producing 20,000 MW of Nuclear power by 2020 i.e. around 1000 MW of additional nuclear capacity per year for the next 17 years.

The 2011 anti-corruption movement in India—characterised by a huge trust deficit in the political class—was the culmination of several such localised movements that marked the birth of a new civil society in contemporary urban India. This paper studies the profusion of middle-class-led associations in Mumbai fighting for good governance, and their increased political mobilisation in the city. It argues that a new civil society bypasses electe

This paper argues that the challenges in the governance of two Himalayan river systems, the Ganges and the Brahmaputra, emerge largely from crucial information and knowledge gaps. The dominance of the paradigm of “reductionist hydrology” solely based on structural interventions has resulted in the lack of recognition of the long-run costs incurred through ecosystem damages and water conflicts at various levels. The knowledge gaps—including

Wetlands are important ecosystems that provide benefits such as flood control, water purification, and biodiversity conservation. In India, however, wetlands are threatened by pollution, encroachment, and rampant real estate development. This brief assesses the East Kolkata Wetlands to illustrate the challenges of preserving urban wetlands in India. It also presents recommendations to establish more comprehensive wetlands management and conservat

A lot has been discussed about PM Modi's first year in office. While actions and policies on economy, security, external affairs, 'Make in India' are being deliberated upon extensively, there is little attention on how the government has fared on gender equity.

In the latest despicable act of extreme cruelty, the arm of an Indian maid working in a Saudi Arabian household was chopped off by her employer. Since the royal in question was King Salman's son, there are no prizes for guessing that no member of the ruling family will be punished for this incident.

The RBI has sensibly shown selective flexibility to soothe angry government voices.

Mitigating the adverse impact of Beijing’s crude ambition while simultaneously absorbing Chinese capital is a tough balancing act. Before making policy choices, India must rapidly improve its ability to monitor the full extent of economic exposure to China.

This report is part of the Observer Research Foundation’s “Financing Green Transitions” series which aims to find potential linkages between private capital, in all its forms, and climate action projects. The series will primarily examine domestic and international barriers to private capital entry for mitigation oriented climate projects, while also examining potential avenues for private capital flow entry towards adaptation and resilienc

There was a great scope for expanding economic ties between India and Kazakhstan, said Kazakh Ambassador to India, Kairat Umarov, at an interaction in Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi.

Greece's problems, which started in 2009, are casting a deep shadow on world stock markets. India is also feeling the impact. The BSE Sensex took a deep plunge though it has recovered recently. The rupee has been falling in terms of the dollar during the last few weeks.

To successfully combat climate change, there is an urgent need to finance mitigation and adaptation efforts at various levels. Green bonds are a relatively new funding instrument for green projects that have steadily become the first line of defence against climate change. India, in particular, has immense scope to diversify the green bond market beyond renewable energy. This brief analyses the policy structure of countries that have successfully

Although India and Africa have long shared close ties, engagement between the two regions is yet to reach its full potential. However, amid the global green transition and attempts to enhance energy security, green hydrogen—increasingly seen as the ‘fuel of the future’—could provide a new avenue for cooperation between the regions. Such a partnership, focused on building a global value chain for the large-scale adoption of green h

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a massive economic and social fallout for India, as it has across the globe. In India, large numbers of people lost their jobs, and supply chains across industries and agriculture have been disrupted. At the same time, environmental indicators—notably air and freshwater quality—showed improvements following the long period of a nationwide lockdown. This brief outlines why India must make a focused decision to mov

It is important to differentiate between physical capital as produced means of production in contrast to natural capital which is naturally endowed. The latter facilitates a host of ecosystem services[i] that flow through human processes, both societal and economic. Unlike physical capital, natural capital cannot be substituted easily. Therefore, this stock of natural capital processing into the flow of ecosystem functions need to be valued and

The hypothesis of “jobless growth” has been central to recent debates around India’s economic development trajectory. This brief undertakes an evaluation of secondary data to test whether India is indeed experiencing jobless growth. The authors find that the characterisation of “jobless growth” is both reductive and empirically unsound, and India’s employment landscape has experienced notable expansion alongside robust Gross Domestic

In the 1980s, a young India was being excited against older nation-states. In the 2020s, an ancient civilisation is leading the way in forging a new consensus

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.

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.

अमेरिकेतील वाढत्या अंतर्गत फूटीची तीव्रता आता शिगेला पोहोचली आहे.

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

Even if there’s a ground invasion by Israel into Gaza and an extended conflict, the impact on energy prices and the resultant OPEC response would depend on the scale and reach that the conflict takes. If it remains localised without affecting major oil producers or transit routes, prices may see limited immediate change, prompting OPEC to maintain current production levels

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.

Agriculture remains the world’s biggest employer and the most important source of food and raw material for various economic activities. The fulfillment of a number of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is anchored on the performance of the sector. This brief examines the most crucial negative consequences of how modern agriculture is practiced, and how these will make it difficult for the world to realise the SDGs. Drawing on examples fr

Due to the persistent adversarial nature of the Sino-Indian border environment, and because China is now a de facto maritime neighbour as well, India needs to examine its options of leveraging sea power. This brief analyses some fundamentals of sea control and sea denial, and examines some misconceptions about these. By using factors of time, force and space, the brief argues that while maritime economic warfare (explained as counter-value operat

The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aim to “leave no one behind’’ and directed all countries to work together to end poverty and other deprivations. Achieving the SDGs requires collaborative strategies aimed at improving technologies of the Least Developing Countries (LDCs) in the productive sectors such as agriculture. Understandably, in most developing countries, the agriculture sector is characterised by informality, small scale,

India and Nepal are fellow riparian nations in South Asia and thus could potentially use their shared water resources as avenues for collaborative effort. Using water to generate hydropower for maximum benefit comes from a place of mutual interest, allowing for optimum leverage for the socio-economic development of both countries. This brief outlines a history of the India-Nepal hydroelectric power scenario, and offers recommendations for growth.

India’s online gaming sector is rapidly growing, surpassing other emerging digital sectors in the country. It contributes to GST revenue, creates jobs, and attracts FDI. The sector also promotes ancillary sectors, contributing indirectly to the economy. However, concerns persist around harms such as addiction, financial crimes like money laundering, and implications to national security. Regulatory uncertainty continues to hinder the sector’s

Forests help mitigate the impacts of climate change, provide economic benefits for the country, and meet specific facets of India’s sustainable development goals. It is essential, therefore, to revisit India’s forest governance and evaluate the country’s efforts at forest restoration and conservation. This brief examines the current state of India’s forests, explores the effectiveness of forest restoration and conservation measures, and r

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.

Despite renewed efforts, the complex integration of the aerial refuelling probe on the Tejas fighter hasn’t been properly accomplished.

With Xi Jinping and the Communist Party facing various pressures, Beijing could be tempted to deflect the attention

The increasing range of cross-boundary health issues has prompted the integration of health into the discipline of diplomacy, and this trend is reflected in India-Africa partnership. India’s development partnerships are, however, predicated on the idea of development effectiveness, which requires active private sector engagement. By focusing on four opportunity sectors — medical tourism, tele-health, frugal innovations, and the pharmaceutica

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