India is becoming a graveyard for the dying ships. And so it is for the workers of the shipyards too. Shipbreaking is also environmentalists’ nightmare. Toxic materials, most of which are highly hazardous, are dumped in the ship-breaking yards of India. The most tragic part of the story is the fate of the workers who are facing fatal occupational hazards. Not to forget, India is one of the six surviving ship-breaking nations in the world, along with China, Bangladesh, Turkey, Pakistan and Myanmar.
The recent announcements by Madhav Kumar Nepal, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Nepal – United Marxist Leninist (CPN-UML), that Maoists are willing to give up arms and join the mainstream necessitates neighbouring India to have a fresh look at the crisis. According to him the Maoists are ready to lay down their arms under UN supervision if there is a consensus for the election to a constituent assembly.
Trends in defence expenditure denote certain clues to assess, especially the military component of a state’s comprehensive national power. Components of national power, in turn, are intricately linked to a state’s grand strategy - the latter connotes the desire of a state to achieve its rightful place in the global community. In brief, trends in defence expenditure tend to objectively assess aspects of a state’s military capability, although a lacuna remains as even the very concept of military capability is often value-laden.
Just as India is vying for a permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council, Japan equally hopes for a larger role in the future of world affairs. Since Kofi Annan’s announcement in September 2004 of possibly increasing the permanent membership seats to nine from five, India and Japan, two of Asia’s powerhouses, pressed for their recognition. Indeed, one is the second most populous nation and the other holds the second largest economy, it seems fitting for them to have a say in future world affairs.
Two piracy attacks in less than a fortnight on Japanese flagged vessels transiting through the Malacca Strait have shaken up the government in Tokyo as also the national shipping agencies. On March 14, armed pirates in three fishing boats boarded a Japanese-flag ocean tug MV Idaten towing a large construction barge Kurooshia, for Myanmar in the Straits of Malacca. They kidnapped the Japanese Master and two engineers. Later, the Royal Malaysian police patrol boats escorted the tug and towed the vessel to Penang.