First check if there is better than here The professor has set the question paper. And it’s not an easy exam. The desirability of a world without nuclear weapons, Thomas Schelling argues in a brilliant essay in Daedalus, is being treated as axiomatic, and “hardly any of the analyses or policy statements that I have ...
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Defence budgeting would do well with more economic reasoning One of the topics discussed at the Takshashila Executive Programme on Strategic Affairs in New Delhi earlier this month was the issue of defence budgeting. Mukul Asher and Sushant K Singh have an op-ed in DNA today that covers one aspect of it—the need to have ...
No deal is a good deal, but the real deal is geopolitical Back in October 2007, this blog had argued that because “it requires unprecedented international co-operation at a time of geopolitical flux…we can’t expect meaningful international co-operation on tacking climate change”. Instead “the immediate ray of hope is unilateral domestic action: states may be ...
Let’s find out whether it works This blog has long argued that for governance to improve more citizens must vote. So what should we make of the Gujarat state’s decision to make voting compulsory in all local body elections? Constitutional and philosophical reasons apart (see Pratap Bhanu Mehta’s op-ed for this) this is an interesting ...
It’s about strategy, not popularity There is often a negative correlation between popularity and good policy: what is popular is often not good policy, and vice versa. This is especially true when it comes to foreign policy. For instance, the Times of India thinks nothing of publishing an op-ed article titled “Call Pakistan’s bluff”, in ...
Social respectability shouldn’t get in the way of legality Madhu Kishwar takes an eminently sensible comment by the Supreme Court—that the government ought to consider legalising prostitution—and engages in a tangential polemic on the social respectability of the oldest profession. “While there is need to decriminalise this activity and free sex workers from the terror ...
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What do you think? So dear readers, what you think of a proposal to send Indian troops to Afghanistan—this will allow the United States to deploy more of its own troops to the conflict on and across the Durand Line. Note: Keep your replies short, succinct and on-topic. Tweet ...
Okay, it’s a strong prod In his opening remarks at the first Takshashila Executive Programme on Strategic Affairs, hosted by the National Maritime Foundation yesterday (wire report) (pic), K Subrahmanyam noted that the India media has ignored reports of how the Obama administration has put the squeeze on Pakistan asking it to jettison its duplicitousness ...