Unshackling the Armed Forces: Need for Greater Delegation of Financial Powers The recommendations of a committee set up in 2009 to review the delegated powers were accepted by the Defence Minister in December 2010 but soon thereafter these were held in abeyance because of the perceived fear that there was a large scale misuse of the delegated powers and that implementation of committee’s recommendations would result in excessive delegation of powers. Amit Cowshish | March 25, 2014 | IDSA Comments
UNSC Vote on the Crimean Issue: Why did China Abstain? The reasons for abstention go far beyond the immediate issue at hand and are enveloped in deep Chinese strategic interests. The Chinese leadership is adamant that there can be no dilution of the concept of the principle of non-violation of the territorial integrity of nation states in the international system. R. S. Kalha | March 21, 2014 | IDSA Comments
Crimean crisis: A New Phase of Cold War? Putin seems to have concluded that Russia must draw the line at Ukraine. The EU bid to sign trade agreement with Ukraine in December drew Russia’s ire and now Russia has moved to make Crimea its part thus changing the borders in Europe once again and deepening the distrust between Russia and the West at a time when serious issues like Syria, Iran and Afghanistan are yet to be resolved. Arvind Gupta | March 21, 2014 | IDSA Comments
Chess Game over Crimea The West will be compelled by their own threats to impose economic sanctions against Russia. But Russia is no Iraq or Iran and may very well retaliate against Western companies, for example, Exxon Mobile is active in Russia and there are 6,000 German companies in Russia. K. P. Fabian | March 20, 2014 | IDSA Comments
RFI for the Basic Trainer Aircraft: New Ray of Hope for the Indian industry It is difficult to understand why the MoD should bind itself by asking for request for information (RFI) that cannot be compared across all the proposals. What would constitute ‘capability’ and ‘requisite infrastructure’ to license produce the aircraft is a matter of subjective interpretation and therefore, it would become difficult for MoD to assess whether the information provided by a bidder establishes that he/she has the requisite capability/infrastructure. Amit Cowshish | March 19, 2014 | IDSA Comments
China at your doorstep: Looking east from India’s northeast Myanmar and India have followed separate political paths only to find it converging in recent times. Myanmar’s other neighbour China has had a much larger footprint in the country. India has to calibrate its engagement with Myanmar to not just effectively implement its Look East policy but also manage the contiguous border regions of Northeast India given the ground realities. Namrata Goswami | March 18, 2014 | Issue Brief
India-China relations: Visa issue Since China has now become an important location for international sports events, sportspersons from Arunachal Pradesh, who want to participate in such events, are not able to do so because of the Chinese practice of issuing stapled visas. This category of sportspersons should be issued regular Chinese visa to enable them to participate. R N Das | March 18, 2014 | IDSA Comments
Offsets Facilitation Cell: Optimizing its Potential On Feb 14, 2014, MoD issued an office memorandum about operationalization of a Offsets Facilitation Cell. This is the perhaps the first positive step in a long time and the MoD needs to be complimented for it. However, absence of an operating procedure, clarity about the exact nature of mandate and guidelines for those who will man the cell could turn out to be a bane for this wonderful initiative. Amit Cowshish | March 14, 2014 | IDSA Comments
The issue of de-militarisation of Northern Province of Sri Lanka De-militarisation per se is a sensitive issue, however, it is of essence that the Sri Lanka armed forces` role vis-à-vis the provincial administrations or even in the larger island-nation context be re-defined. It be a good idea to engage the SLA in project activities and relocate the army throughout the country and not be exclusively entrenched in the northern province. Gautam Sen | March 13, 2014 | IDSA Comments
Early Trends in Afghan Elections: Abdullah Leads the Show According to a poll survey, 29 per cent supported the candidacy of Ashraf Ghani, a former World Bank expert, who is one among the three probable candidates President Karzai is supposed to favour. Abdullah Abdullah, runner up in 2009 Presidential poll and former foreign minister, came second with 25 per cent. The rest of the candidates, including Abdul Rab Rasoul Sayaaf, polled under 10 per cent. Ashok K. Behuria , Abhimanyu Singh | March 12, 2014 | IDSA Comments
