Courtesy: @Doug88888
Gateway House’s Akshay Mathur recently visited Brazil to attend a BRICS-themed conference, organised by the National Association of Research and Graduate Programs in the Social Sciences. In this blog, he writes about his first impressions of the country and the similarities between India and Brazil that he observed.
Courtesy: Indian Embassy, Washington D.C.
This daily column includes Gateway House’s Badi Soch – big thought – of the day’s foreign policy event. This Badi Soch analyses the implications of revelations about surveillance on Indian missions, by the U.S. government.
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Earlier in September, Raghuram Rajan took over as Governor of the Reserve Bank of India for three years. While his entry has indeed alleviated the gloomy market environment in Mumbai, there’s more that needs to be done. How can Mumbai reclaim the natural cosmopolitan and intellectual legacy it once boasted of?
Courtesy: United Nations ESCAP
Rajni Bakshi, Senior Gandhi Peace Fellow, Gateway House, delivered a lecture at the ‘International Day of Non-Violence’ at the UN Convention Centre in Thailand, on October 2. In her lecture, she spoke about the significance and the greater potential of non-violent means in achieving the goals of today’s world.
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Since 2009, distraction and dysfunction in India and the U.S. resulted in low enthusiasm vis-à-vis bilateral ties. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who met U.S. President Barack Obama, prior to the UNGA, had one last chance to salvage India-U.S. ties before the country goes to elections in 2014. Did he succeed?
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Ahead of the Indian Prime Minister’s meetings with his counterparts from Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan on the sidelines of the UNGA, Ambassador Neelam Deo and Manjeet Kripalani blog about why India will only be able to conduct its foreign policy overseas, away from its raucous media and opposition parties
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It may take Chancellor Angela Merkel weeks to negotiate a new coalition, but the vote for stability means that change will only be at the margins of current domestic and foreign policy. Still, the fallout of the election in the EU and beyond, including in India, should not be underestimated
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The positive advances made by newly-elected Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and U.S. President Barack Obama at the 68th UN General Assembly indicates a strong potential for a thaw in Tehran-Washington relations. However, it will take sincere efforts from both sides to turn this into concrete reality. Can India help?
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India’s extreme dependence on imported energy often renders our economy vulnerable in the face of geopolitical changes. Given the high financial viability, India, being the world’s second-largest producer of sugarcane, should emulate Brazil by replacing petrol with ethanol as fuel.
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India often finds itself in the right place at the wrong time or vice versa, as our dogma of non-alignment trumps honest calculations of self-interest in policy-making – rendering it unfavourable. The national interest, hence, calls for selective alignment on some issues with Washington and on others with Beijing