US elections are a spectacle and attract enormous media attention. Barring countries like China that have no political interest in exposing their public to such a democratic extravanganza, the media in most others revels even in the trivia of this el....
One of the defining moments in my life was when I was on deputation to Princeton University for a mid-career course. It was the height of the Vietnamese War and the United States was in ferment because many people, especially students, opposed the wa....
We are constantly reviewing the state of our relations with Pakistan in think tank discussions and in the media even when progress in the relationship is inordinately slow. Many think that as a society we pay exaggerated attention to Pakistan, almost....
Archaic rules and deep divisions along political lines within the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) probing the controversial 2G Spectrum sale has affected the efficacy and sanctity of parliamentary investigations. While the controversy over the co....
President Obama win in 2008 was a truly historic occasion as the election of a non-white to the presidency represented the far reaching social change that had occurred relatively undetected in the American society over the years. His second win conso....
India declared itself a state armed with nuclear weapons in May 1998 after the Pokhran tests. Despite the fact that almost 15 years have passed since then, the number of good books on the subject of managing India’s nuclear deterrence can be counte....
China is not a democracy and there is the one party rule of the Communist Party of China (CPC). From time to time the Party holds party meetings at which matters of policy are discussed in detail. The 16th CPC Central Committee meeting wa....
Much is sometimes made of India’s “soft power” as a diplomatic force multiplier. This kind of power is defined as the ability to attract and co-opt rather than coerce, use force or give money as a mean of persuasion. Through this power a countr....
The newspaper headlines and electronic media such as NDTV24×7, Times Now, CNN-IBN keeps screaming at us that India is the land of scams, the very fountainhead of corruption. On the one hand are the Indian people – harried, betrayed, looted by thos....
“Since Tibet is not the same as China, it should ultimately be the wishes of the people of Tibet that should prevail and not any legal or constitutional arguments. That, I think, is a valid point. Whether the people of Tibet are strong enough to....