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India’s has transited innovatively from a cash-based economy to one primarily reliant on digital payment systems. This has brought financial inclusion and transparency, but security threats too, such as data breaches. A look at the major vulnerabilities assailing India’s digital payment systems and ways to plug them.
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The recently announced New and Emerging Strategic Technologies (NEST) Division of India’s Ministry of External Affairs is timely. It can become vital for India’s national technosecurity in the imminent Fourth Industrial Age if a new Cabinet Committee on Futuristic Science and Technologies is established along with it
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The global balance of power is in the process of a fundamental shift. The West appears fixated on China, which is both a “systemic rival” and a strategic partner to be cultivated. Europe now needs to choose between the values it shares with India and commercial profitability from China
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India’s preparedness in the decade of the 2020s for the imminent revolution in space affairs depends on mastering Industry 4.0. This is critical as space aspirations now define national interests – a marked change from the vanity-and-pride programmes of the first space age. This will also determine India’s space leadership for the rest of the 21st century
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The services sector is the most dynamic in the global economy, constituting nearly 25% of global trade, but its intangibility – unlike the materiality of trade in goods – makes it difficult to monitor. Service providers in this sector need a national regulatory governing framework
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India will host four prestigious international conferences, such as the India-Africa Forum Summit and the subsidiary SCO Summit in the course of the next three years. These are historic opportunities for the country to show global leadership and fulfil a diplomatic agenda that involves handling strategic competition and advancing partnerships
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India needs its own merchant fleet to run parallel with its increasingly strong navy. The geopolitical and geoeconomic compulsions have never been greater. India’s growing imports and exports of crude oil, LPG, and coal are all carried on foreign-owned shipping vessels, depriving the country of revenue and creating a geopolitical imbalance with an increasingly strong Indian navy that is set to play a significant role in the Indo-Pacific
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Relations between India and Sri Lanka are set to change. The expeditious manner in which the Indian external affairs minister met the newly elected Sri Lankan president, who reciprocated by making India the first foreign country he visited, raises hopes. An analysis of the factors that impede and facilitate such a shift
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Bombay’s Pathan community was most visible from the 19th century until India’s partition in 1947. Taking to hard labour with a natural ease, they worked mostly in mills and as security staff. Others went into business. Their numbers have thinned now, but they have retained their cultural identity, holding fast to feudal codes of conduct
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India and France have converging interests in the Indo-Pacific – diplomatic, strategic and economic. The 4th Indo-French Maritime Security Dialogue held in New Delhi in December 2019 was an example of major bilateral cooperation. By working together, the two countries became the model for fostering a rules-based, free, open and inclusive region.