Comment & Briefs

Mired in controversies, the 2021 elections in the so-called Azad Jammu and Kashmir were heavily tilted towards the Kashmir issue, which overpowered all other issues including those concerning immediate local needs and the extant development lag.

Beijing’s stance on Afghanistan’s political crisis and its approach towards the Taliban regime is a critical variable that will shape the geometrics of the China–Taliban–Pakistan nexus versus India and the West.

The early reactions from Turkey and Iran underline their readiness to work with the Taliban to safeguard their interests and expand their regional influence. Both are also willing to work with other regional actors to mitigate traditional and non-traditional security threats emanating from Afghanistan.

The choice of words Taliban employs to communicate with the international community is symptomatic not only of the limits of inter-cultural communication, but also depicts how meanings move across geo-cultural spaces and that “right” vocabularies are being used indeed as a qualifier to join the community of nations.

Maintaining security and stability in Central Asia seems to be a key pillar of Russia’s Afghan calculus. By positioning itself as an interlocutor of the Taliban, Russia aims to project itself as an indispensable pole in resolving global and regional issues.

The unfolding horror in Afghanistan appears foreboding for India, as for the rest of the world, considering that a war-ravaged Afghanistan can well become a global terrorism hub under the Taliban.

India and GCC share convergence of ideas and interests along with the political will to collaborate in the hydrogen energy sector. There is a need to provide impetus to the public and private partnerships in this sector as it has a strong potential for growth in future.

The COVID-19 pandemic has situated the policy conversation on economic security at the centre stage of national security calculus not just in US and Europe but also in Japan. For Japan, it would entail attaining “strategic autonomy” in critical supply chains at the national level, and pursuing “strategic indispensability” at the global level.

The Digital Silk Road can give China the power to shape global digital governance norms in its favour and the political, economic and strategic tools to be a technological hegemon, posing enormous challenges to emerging economies like India.

The GFR 2017 permit individual ministries to issue detailed instructions to address the needs and complexities of procurement carried out by them. The question is whether those principles and rules come in the way of the Ministry of Defence evolving a more efficient procurement procedure that meets the armed forces’ aspirations.