'India is now surrounded on its north, west and east by unfriendly neighbours -- Pakistan, China, Nepal and Bangladesh -- some of whom are openly inimical,' notes Amulya Ganguli.
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Modi government must push reforms at a fast pace to restore growth.
United States Secretary of State John Kerry has held wide-ranging talks with visiting Foreign Secretary Sujatha Singh on key issues, including the regional situation with respect to Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
The prestigious Foreign Policy magazine released the 2010 Failed State Index this week. Barring a few shuffles, the top 10 slots on the list have been almost the same as the previous year's list.
No matter who replaces Sharif, India must maintain its guard, says Col Anil Bhat (Retired).
EAM Jaishankar's mission is aimed at strengthening India's strategic autonomy in a complex international environment, observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
But it is less adventurous. It seems, at last, that in its eighth decade, Pakistan has settled into being a parliamentary democracy just like Bangladesh has and like we have always been, observes Aakar Patel.
The Border Security Force has been put on high alert along the India-Bangladesh border in Assam and Tripura following intelligence inputs of Islamic terrorists planning to infiltrate the country.
India must integrate more with East Asia by getting into regional trade arrangements, lower its tariff walls, and improve the quality of its workforce, suggests T N Ninan.
'I don't know who is deciding Indian foreign policy today. I don't know who is deciding how India deals with Pakistan,' former Union minister Ram Jethmalani takes on the Modi government.
Condolences continued to pour in from world dignitaries for former external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj who breathed her last due to cardiac arrest on Tuesday night.
Last year, China held a meeting with some South Asian countries on COVID-19 vaccine cooperation without the participation of India.
A healthy growth in India's services segments has helped the country's total exports and imports of goods and services to cross the $800 billion mark during the first half of 2023, despite a slowdown in global demand, think tank GTRI said in a report on Monday. According to the analysis of the Global Trade Research Initiative (GTRI), exports of goods and services rose by 1.5 per cent to $385.4 billion during January-June this year, as against $379.5 billion in January-June 2022. Imports, however, dipped by 5.9 per cent to $415.5 billion during the six months of this year, as against $441.7 billion in January-June 2022.
'I was present at a meeting where he decided to permit the IAF to strike at Pakistan positions in Kargil, with the caveat that they should not cross the LoC.' 'Confident that the Indian Army would succeed, Mr Vajpayee was positioning himself to tell the world after the Kargil conflict was won that India did not violate the 'sanctity' of the LoC,' recalls Ambassador G Parthasarathy, who served as India's envoy in Islamabad in that eventful year, 1999.
'You know the kind of force involved in all of this. They are not good for the country where all of this will happen.'
India is an 'extraordinarily important' economy and an 'important partner' of Canada in a range of sectors including fighting climate change and creating economic growth, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Sunday.
Leading the Opposition attack over the Adani-Hindenburg issue in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday linked Gautam Adani's meteoric rise to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's coming to power and said "magic" happened after 2014 that propelled the businessman from the 609th to the second spot on the global rich list.
Vikram J Singh, the highest-ranking Indian American at the Pentagon is quitting his administration job to head up the national security division at the Center for American Progess -- a Washington, DC progressive think tank with close links to President Obama -- which has at its helm another Indian American, Neera Tanden.
The agency had received Rs 946.51 crore to manage its affairs in the Budget Estimates for 2023-24, which was later increased to Rs 968.86 crore in the Revised Estimates.
Barely days after imposing a 40 per cent export tax on onions to cool down soaring prices, which, in turn, triggered widespread protests across the main growing belts, the Centre on Tuesday sought to mitigate both political and economic tensions gripping parts of Maharashtra. It decided to procure an additional 200,000 tonnes of onions at Rs 2,410 per quintal for its buffer stock from farmers, a rate that is strikingly close to the price at which they were being exported before the 40 per cent duty was levied on August 19. The export price before the imposition of the duty stood at around $320 per tonne free on board (approximately Rs 2,650 per quintal).
Rulers in New Delhi and their political aides in sensitive states like Tamil Nadu have to be doubly careful not to provoke a situation whose consequences may be much more than visible now to the naked eye, notes N Sathiya Moorthy.
India has put curbs on wheat exports through the government route, starting November last year. This comes amid a surge in domestic prices of the cereal. In December, India exported 391 tonnes of wheat to Bangladesh and Bhutan. In November 2022, it had exported 375 tonnes of wheat only to Bhutan.
Today, with China centrally seated and located, the Global South has an intriguing road ahead. Odds of it becoming a Chinese bloc in the emerging new bipolar world are higher than we'd wish them to be, observes Shekhar Gupta.
India shifted gears in rejuvenating strategic ties with its major partners like the US and Russia and focused on drumming up global support for its distinct strategy in the Indo-Pacific to check Beijing's increasing muscle-flexing in the region.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has done the seemingly impossible by finalising the long-pending Land Boundary Agreement ahead of his Bangladesh visit, writes Prakash Bhandari.
'Modi-Shah have understood the risks their cynical mixing of domestic political motivations with strategic national interests was soon going to become counterproductive asserts Shekhar Gupta.
India on Friday launched a no-holds-barred attack on Pakistan Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari for his 'uncivilised' outburst against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and said the comments were a 'new low' even for that country.
'China was a relationship from which Mr Modi had expected the most it seems.' 'It showed in a string of summits, and somewhat breathless celebration of Xi Jinping.' 'It was hasty and simplistic,' observes Shekhar Gupta.
What is it that China seeks and why has the Ladakh border become and remained hot for two years and what is going on in Arunachal Pradesh?, asks Aakar Patel.
Shivshankar Menon said the government's amendment to the Citizenship Act was a "self-inflicted goal".
'He was always opposed to a form of nationalism that was narrow, selfish and arrogant.' 'He will always remain a beacon of inspiration for freedom-loving people across the world and for movements of resistance against oppressive State power.'
'China's deep involvement in the stability and economic and political success of Pakistan actually produces some elements of congruence with India's core interest in a stable and productive relationship with Pakistan.' 'It is not far-fetched for us to pursue that congruence and with ingenuity work out with China a formula that also satisfies our formal position on PoK,' argues Ambassador Kishan S Rana.
'Mere fundamentals will not do the trick,' cautions former commerce secretary Rahul Khullar.
Any Indian government at this juncture would have voted and spoken exactly this way. It isn't just about the vast Indian dependence on Russian-origin military equipment. It is also about trust, asserts Shekhar Gupta.
Ravi Sinha is described as "highly tech-savvy", and credited with infusing modern technology in the field of intelligence collection.
Heading G20 will give India a foreign affairs year like it has never had in history. You can trust Narendra Modi to exploit this to India's benefit. And, of course, to his own in his election year, explains Shekhar Gupta.
It is for the investigating agencies to probe all aspects of the assassination, including a possible Chinese hand, or if the killer was just a disgruntled element who acted on his own and wanted to earn some dark space in history like Nathuram Godse or Lee Harvey Oswald, notes Japan expert Rajaram Panda.
Colombo seems to be veering to the middle path between China and the US on global matters, but in regional matters of strategic security, it is increasingly identifying with India, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
'Why do visas require the intervention of India's Union ministers? Does any civilised nation assure visas like this over Twitter?'
