Is the Indian Navy about to start mixing it up with China on the high seas? For years, as the Chinese have modernized their naval fleet, Indian strategists have worried about what that might mean for India’s political and economic interests. A recent book by C. Raja Mohan, one of India’s most influential strategic thinkers, explores the […]
India’s engagement with Africa has grown remarkably over the past decade. Trade with Africa jumped from U.S. $3 billion in 2000 to $52.81 billion in 2010-11 and is expected to exceed $90 billion by 2015. India has emerged as Africa’s fourth largest trade partner, after the European Union, China and the United States. Its cumulative […]
“Continuity” is a word that National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon is likely to hear often from his Chinese interlocutors during his visit to Beijing, which begins today. Mr. Menon, who is also the Special Representative on the boundary question, will meet State Councillor Dai Bingguo, his counterpart on the border talks, for what officials have […]
Many years ago, Pakistan analyst Khaled Ahmed identified some nations as not having a foreign policy. Export-oriented economies, according to his thesis, chose not to have a clearly defined foreign policy. On issues of controversy, they lay low rather than commit to a side. Ahmed named Singapore and South Korea as his examples. For them, […]
In the aftermath of the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the Narasimha Rao government reworked India’s dysfunctional economic and foreign policies to improve India’s abysmal terms of trade with the rest of the world. The latest global financial crisis seems to have shaken the United States’ global dominance and is forcing India to revisit its […]
When nations become strong and their companies begin to spread business to other countries, interests are bound to either collide or come together. For decades, it was the turn of the Western multinationals to face political wrath in faraway countries. Remember India threw out Coca Cola and IBM? Now it is the turn of Chinese and […]
The growing focus of Indian companies, including government ones, on emerging markets across Asia and Africa, and the attendant political risks of doing business in a dynamic policy regime—a problem that several Western multinationals have encountered in India—has highlighted a new challenge for New Delhi: protecting the overseas investments of Indian firms. Earlier this week, […]
Early in his first term, Obama wasn’t especially warm towards India. However, he soon visited India, hosted Manmohan Singh as the first foreign leader at the White House, and advocated a permanent seat for India on the United Nations Security Council. Obama has since tried to rope India, along with Japan, into a hedge against […]
India is caught in an ugly societal whodunit: Although the per capita gross domestic product for the country’s 1.2 billion people has almost doubled over the past decade, to $838, malnutrition and hunger are still rampant, especially among children. A months-long series of investigative reports by Bloomberg News highlights that India’s failure to adequately feed its […]
IT IS hard to feel particularly sorry at the hanging of Ajmal Kasab, in Pune, India, early on November 21st. He was the sole surviving gunman from a 2008 Mumbai terrorist attack, in which Pakistani infiltrators killed at least 166 people during a prolonged and traumatising rampage in the city. The assault on ordinary residents […]
looking beyond borders 