India Needs a Coherent Climate Change Strategy

For the Indian climate crusaders the year 2007 has become more important for three reasons. First the entry of climate change as an agenda item to United Nations Security Council on April 18. Now, the Nobel award for Peace to the scientific community - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and former US Vice-President Al Gore for making people aware of climate change. It’s argued that after the prestigious award, the issue would become everybody’s business to know, manage and resolve it.

Avilash Roul

India in the ASEAN Geopolitical Construct

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has a geopolitical dimension that people outside the foreign policy circuit in India may not be sufficiently aware of. The ASEAN has always wanted to influence the shape of the regional order in Southeast Asia and the role of major powers in it. How can a group of ten relatively small countries aspire to manage the geopolitics of a region that is stalked by military or economic giants like the US and Japan and rising behemoths like China and India with populations of more than one billion each?

Daljit Singh

Sluggish India-Pakistan Anti-Terror Mechanism

Remember Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf’s high profile meeting and the promises at Havana (Cuba), on the sidelines of NAM (Non-Alignment Movement) summit in mid September 2006. One year has been passed since both leaders agreed to have a joint anti-terror mechanism (ATM) to identify and implement counter-terrorism initiatives and investigations. It was considered significant then.

Animesh Roul

India and the US: Engaged Democracies!

‘Estranged democracies’ is how Dennis Kux once characterised relations between the US and India. For a large part of India’s independent history, Kux’s characterisation hit the nail bang on the head. A norm of suspicion with regards to the American’s seemed to have institutionalised itself within India’s strategic culture, and there were good reasons for this.

RUDRA CHAUDHURI

Special Economic Zone: The New Conflict Ground in India

More than a decade of opening of India, the Special Economic Zone (SEZ), probably has become the most controversial economic reforms announced in recent time. While some consider it as India’s supersonic engine of growth, others severely criticize it as the latest land grab instrument in the hands of the industrialists. Serious discourses on models of development, displacement and rehabilitation, employment generation, foreign investment, primacy of industry over agriculture are being raised in justification as well as against the whole concept of SEZ.

Rajat Kumar Kujur

Havana Adventure: Will the Indo-Pak Counter Terror Mechanism Succeed?

The recent Havana initiative by the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh depicts a marked shift in India’s Pakistan policy. Manmohan Singh at Havana had announced on the sidelines of the NAM (Non-Aligned Movement) summit that India and Pakistan are proposing to handle the threat of terrorism jointly. This novel concept of resuming formal peace negotiations with Pakistan (frozen after 11 July Mumbai train blasts) and setting up of a joint agency to tackle terrorism appears to be an ‘atypical’ step as compared to the earlier ‘cautious’ approach.

Ajey Lele

In Sri Lanka, a New Eelam War?

Amid mixed reports of a rebel withdrawal and relative calm, there continue to be fierce and bloody clashes on the island nation of Sri Lanka between military forces of the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), commonly known as the Tamil Tigers.

ANIMESH ROUL

TM: Student Islamic Movement of India: A Profile

July 26, 2006

In the weeks following the deadly serial bombings in Indian capital, New Delhi in October last year, the Union Home department in a revealing disclosure informed a hitherto unknown Inquilabi militant outfit which shouldered the responsibility of Delhi blasts has been active in Southern parts of the country and associated with the outlawed 'Student Islamic Movement of India' (hereafter SIMI), the radical outlawed Muslim student outfit.

ANIMESH ROUL

Drug Trafficking in India and African Connection

The recent illegal drug hauls in various parts of India and couple of high profile drug abuse cases involving people in power brought the spotlight back onto illegal drug issues in the country. India’s Anti Narcotics Bureau and the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence have seized drugs ranging from Cocaine to Heroine and other opiates worth millions of dollars in the international market within the last few months. The fact is drug trafficking and illegal drug abuse have been taking place in the subcontinent for very long but have been relatively ignored.

Mpho Mashaba

Bush Sojourn and Indo-US Nuclear Deal

Wrapping up his three-day India sojourn, US President George W. Bush reiterated that the relationship between India and the United States was 'closer than ever before' and India is a natural ally for the US. Ally or not, after months of intense deliberations and days of hard bargaining, India and the US have inked a landmark civilian nuclear cooperation agreement in New Delhi in early March which allows India to access U.S. nuclear fuel and technology to meet its growing energy requirements.

Animesh Roul