On 26 Sep 2016, the VIF held a fascinating interaction with Ambassador Timothy J. Roemer, former Member of the US Congress for six terms from Indiana and Ambassador to India (2009-2011), sharing his perspective on the 2016 U.S. presidential election, as also the future direction in Indo-US relations.
Leading a four-member delegation, Mr. YI Peng, founder President of the Pangoal Institution, a Bejing-based non-governmental think tank, visited the Vivekananda International Foundation (VIF) on 20 Sep 2016 for an interaction, targeted at exploring potentials for expanding economic cooperation between China and India, especially in the private sectors.
On 19 Sep 2016, Amb Dinkar Srivastava, India’s former Ambassador to Iran, conducted a round table discussion on ‘India-Iran relations and the way forward’. The interaction among experts focused on three key issues: terrorism, regional connectivity and India’s oil and gas imports from Iran.
Amb Amar Sinha, Secretary (Economic Relations) in the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), Government of India, interacted with a select panel of policy experts at the VIF on 09 Sep 2016, focusing on the Prime Minister’s visit to Africa and the way forward in India-Africa relations. The interaction squarely focused on adding more teeth to India’s Africa policy.
Leading a five-member delegation of the ‘China Association for International Friendly Contact’ (CAIFC), Mr. Liu Hanwu, Director, Asian Affairs and Standing Counsel Member of the CAIFC, visited the Vivekananda International Foundation (VIF) on 08 Sep 2016 for an interaction that broadly hinged on potentials for improving ties between China and India, especially around cultural and historical legacies.
Dr. David Brewster, a well known Australian maritime expert and author of ‘India as an Asia Pacific Power’, held a comprehensive interaction with the VIF’s strategic faculty on 07 September 2016 aimed at analyzing potentials for developing a tri-lateral partnership between India, Australia and the United States in the Indo-Pacific region.
The VIF held an internal Round Table Discussion on 12 August 2016, necessitated largely by the fact that China-Pakistan axis, which has remained India’s Achilles heel for long, has begun to manifest in recent years in ways that are increasingly detrimental not only to India’s security but also to the region’s security as a whole.
In 1868 or even in 1880s, Japan lagged behind even colonial India in many parameters including technical infrastructure, education, railways, etc. Neither was it a rich nation. Perhaps the corollary to it never being too early for achieving Jiritsu in defence hardware, is that it is never too late or too early to begin the journey towards swavalamban (self-reliance).
A delegation of China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR), led by its President Prof. Ji Zhiye, including Mr. Han Liqun and Mr. Hu Shisheng, among others, visited the VIF on 5 August 2016 for an interaction on India-China relations and the way forward.
Two years two months, 51 foreign trips on six of the seven continents of the world which covered 42 countries and included UN General Assembly meetings and scores of multilateral engagements; the debutant Prime Minister Narendra Modi has stirred the global diplomacy not in terms of sheer number of trips that he has made but in terms of their historic outcomes within a very short span of time. As T.