Disaster Management in India - The Urgency of Fresh Thinking

Swami Vivekananda once visited a great sage of our country, a very holy man and wrote: “We talked about our revered book- the Vedas, of your Bible, of the Koran, and of the revered books in general. At the close of our talk, this great sage asked m....

Talk By Amb Hussain Haqqani

Pakistan's former Ambassador to USA, Hussain Haqqani, delivered a talk on “Pakistan: Democracy, Modernism, Jihad” before a distinguished gathering at Vivekananda International Foundation on August 13, 2014. Ambassador Haqqani who is currently the....

The Berlin-Baghdad Express; Sean McMeekin; Penguin Books 2011; PP 461; Price Rs 550; eBook Rs 413

Ideas & Ideologies That Provoked World War I Still Pose A Threat Many books have been written about the First World War, especially in recent years, as more information emerges in the public domain. This year – the hundredth anniversary of the o....

India Can Turn Its Back on Pakistan

The Pakistan High Commissioner (HC) should not have met the Hurriyat leaders when he was asked by the Indian Foreign Secretary not to do so. Diplomatic norms obliged him to take this request communicated at such high level seriously and failure to do....

State of Military Might in Resurgent India

Powerful nations radiate powerful influence far across their geographical borders over countries and continents. And this influence is mostly coercive – often disregarding opinions of a majority of sovereign nations. President Bush was brazenly exp....

Time for India to use its Soft Power in China

July 2014 is an important month for global economics and China. It is the first time in recent history that China has overtaken USA in GDP [adjusted for purchasing power parity or PPP] and has become number one country in the world according to Eurom....

The Neighbour from Hell - India-Pakistan: Iron in the Soul

The decision to call off the scheduled Foreign Secretary level talks with Pakistan appears to have taken many by surprise, and left many in India quite unhappy. They seem to be unable to understand that a meeting between the Pakistan High Commissione....

Article 331 Needs A Re-look: Open Lok Sabha Nominations to Parsis Also

The House of the People (the Lok Sabha) has 543 elected members and two nominated seats. Article 331 of the Constitution stipulates that the nominated seats are exclusively for members of the Anglo-Indian community. This provision was made in 1950 in....

Creeping Coup Redux: Civil-Military Relations in Pakistan

A few months before the 1999 military coup, a monthly newsmagazine in Pakistan carried a cover story titled ‘Creeping Coup’. In his second stint as Prime Minister from 1996-99, Nawaz Sharif had started involving the military in all sorts of thing....

Seminar on West Asia

VIF organized a seminar on ‘Recent Developments in West Asia: Challenges and Implications’ on July 25, 2014 to analyse the situation in the strife-torn area and its broader ramifications for the region and India. The seminar, inter alia, focused ....

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