For less than one million Bhutanese populations, the year 2008 ushered a new era of governance. The year witnessed the melting down a century old monarchy to a democratic constitutional monarchy. A parliamentary democratic government was formed in the nation based on the universal adult franchise. The Himalayan landlocked country drafted a constitution with provisions of 35 articles and 4 schedules, with prior objective to eradicate Bhutan’s backwardness and accelerate the development.

The India-Japan partnership is one of the important thrust areas of Japan’s new foreign policy. In the recent past, except Mori, Koizumi and Abe, other prime ministers have shown little enthusiasm for the improvement of relationship with India. However, that trend seems to be changing.

Among the several congratulatory letters received by Prime Minster Manmohan Singh on his reelection, the message from the French President Nicolas Sarkozy merits attention. While inviting Prime Minster Manmohan Singh to be the Chief Guest at the forthcoming ceremonies marking the National Day of France on July 14, Sarkozy has praised the Indian democratic system and alluded ‘ to the values of liberty, people's sovereignty and respect of diversity in secularism'.

The Government of Bangladesh has recently accepted India’s proposal to set up a Joint Task Force to deal with militancy and other anti-national elements. However, modalities of the Task Force are yet to be decided. As of now, India will be assisting Bangladesh with intelligence inputs only without any direct involvement in any joint military operations to flush out militants taking shelter in Bangladesh.

The Indian Navy was recently briefed on the Aegis ballistic missile defence (BMD) system for ships. The US aerospace giant Lockheed Martin had discussions with Indian authorities and reports suggest that they are ‘open to collaboration’ with the Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO) on integrating the Prithvi Air Defence Shield (PADS) with the Aegis system.

In spite of the seemingly difficult terrain in generating and implementing confidence-building measures in South Asia, all are not doom and gloom. It is thus plausible to make the following conclusions based on existing regional and sub-regional arrangements in South Asia.

India and Pakistan, as the two new de facto nuclear weapon states in the nuclear club since 1998, have embarked upon some meaningful nuclear risk reduction measures through a series of bilateral agreements.