In today’s Indian Express, Rohit Pradhan and I renew our call for India to send troops to stabilise Afghanistan. It summarises the arguments we have made in on INI and Pragati and addresses the most popular objections to the proposal.
Excerpts:
Over time, a co-operative arrangement between India, Iran and Russia could form the bedrock of [...]
The world doesn’t become bipolar by wishing that it is
Zbigniew Brzezinski, like many others who came of age during the Cold War, believes that a bipolar world is much easier for the United States to ‘manage’ than a multipolar one. That might even be correct. The problem is—the world is not bipolar—even in the face [...]
What would India’s soft power be without Bappi?
In its June 2009 edition, the Proceedings of the Centre for Soft Power Studies reported how Jimmy Zingchak holds sway over the people of Kazakhstan. Today it brings to your attention the wonderful Tajik Jimmy—whose career mirrors that of the Jimmy incarnation. Baimurat Allaberiyev, who herded sheep for [...]
Jolt if not toast
The Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO) was born out of China’s desire to engage the Muslim Central Asian states in a co-operative framework to keep a lid on separatism in Xinjiang. Along with Russia, these states came together to address the threats from “terrorism, separatism and extremism”, the “three forces”, for short.
Now, [...]
Looks like there been a change at South Block
Dr Manmohan Singh should not have attended the summit meeting of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO) at Yekaterinberg not only because India is formally only an ‘observer’ at that outfit, but also because it is not a club that India ought to join. The co-location of the [...]
But India has to live up to its popularity
So here are some results from a survey conducted by ABC News between late December 2008 and early January 2009: “a random national sample” of 1534 adult Afghans across the 34 provinces were asked a number of questions in face-to-face interviews. India, it turns out, is big [...]
…and the Indian wisdom concerning mangoes and trees
It is impossible to eschew sarcasm when you read that the alternative supply route through the Central Asian states “could leave the United States more reliant on cooperation from authoritarian countries like Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, which have poor records when it comes to democracy and human rights.”
One would [...]
Twenty die in an accident on a nuclear-powered submarine that might have been leased to India
There were four times as many people on board as there should have been. And an accidental burst of fire-suppressant gas suffocated twenty of them to death. The Nerpa, an Akula-II class nuclear submarine that was undergoing sea trials in [...]
And why it must do so again
The pirates of Puntland made the strategic mistake of becoming too successful. And they also ran out of luck, when among the vessels they hijacked was one carrying a huge arms shipment, and another something mysteriously important. And suddenly, the world’s navies with the capability to get there—save India’s—decided [...]
Meet the Academician Lomonosov
Swaminomics points out that the issue of land acquisition—epitomised by Mamata Banerjee—will prove to be the real hurdle in building nuclear power plants after the India-US nuclear deal (linkthanks BOK). Mr Aiyar is right—land acquisition is an important issue. (See the December 2007 and August 2008 issues of Pragati).
But who says [...]
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