Courtesy: Sameer Patil & Shah Maieen
A recent trip to Cox’s Bazar showed that despite numerous health, social and security challenges, the Rohingya refugees are reluctant to return to Myanmar. India will have to walk a tightrope, keeping in mind humanitarian, security, and geopolitical priorities
Courtesy: Flickr
Prime Minister Modi’s visit to Myanmar gave the bilateral a substantive boost, but the exodus of over half a million Rohingya refugees dominated the discourse. India’s response has shown a balancing of compulsions, both humanitarian and strategic
Courtesy: Independent.co.uk
Myanmar’s first democratically elected government in decades completes a year this month, but it has not won widespread appreciation on many counts. Critics have highlighted the areas of darkness, but ignored its many achievements
Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons
Even nearly 70 years after independence, the people of Myanmar are struggling to complete nation-building and resolve the Rohingya issue. Is the million-strong community an ethnic group native to Myanmar or is it of South Asian origin, and, therefore, a part of Bangladesh? Evading the issue may not hasten national reconciliation
Courtesy: Wikipedia
Does India plan to remodel its Andaman & Nicobar Islands as a launching pad for future security operations to check growing Chinese inroads in the Indian Ocean Region? Development of the islands has long been ignored to India’s detriment, and their strategic position in the Indian Ocean, underutilised.
Courtesy: Homen Biswas/Wikimedia
As India celebrates its Independence Day, security situation on eastern borders is gradually moving towards stability with experiments in peace making focused on resolving insurgencies and border management. These experiments coupled with the sub-regional economic initiatives potentially put eastern region on the path of prosperity.
Courtesy: Inquisitr.com
The government's media rhetoric and aggrandisement is doing more harm than good to its reputation. It seems intent upon proving right the age-old adage, pride goes before a fall.
Courtesy: Ministry of External Affairs, India
In the coming years, India’s greatest strategic challenge in the Indian Ocean region may not be the development of power projection but the quality of the strategic relationships that it can build in the region. The extents to which India will be recognised as a regional leader depend on these relationships.
Courtesy: James Stencilowsky/ Flickr
Myanmar is a complex issue. Its history, its treatment by neighbours and the West, the complex dilemmas posed by the mixing of morality and realpolitik is a reminder that democracy is only a means to an end. The lives of the ordinary people should matter more than formal institutions in shaping policy decisions.