For better operational cooperation, India and China need to go beyond rudimentary agreements on combating piracy and crime in the Western Indian Ocean. They need to work out an acceptable framework for functional collaboration and create positive momentum in favour of greater strategic interaction.
It is time the MoD considered creating structures and organizations that are not an intrinsic part of the ministerial set up to implement the production and procurement policies once these are formulated by the ministry.
India has to take a call on whether it would like to be a party to the CPEC, sit on the fence, or convey its concerns more emphatically in a bid to discourage China.
Shifting the centre of gravity of fighting from their traditional strongholds in the South to the northern parts of Afghanistan in this operation is indicative of the Taliban’s shift in focus to other regions that are also in the al Qaeda’s radar.
Confrontational politics is not new in Bangladesh. But it seems to have intensified in the last few months, especially after the unofficial main opposition, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), decided to launch protests on the first anniversary of the 2014 parliamentary elections in order to force the Sheikh Hasina-led Awami League government to step down. The BNP considers the January 5, 2014 parliamentary elections as illegal and hence the government in power as illegitimate.
Fears about the Beijing-Rawalpindi axis scripting Kabul politics and thereby causing the complete marginalisation of New Delhi in the region appear far-fetched given the political dynamics of Afghanistan.
India and China could and should cooperate on environmental issues and specifically on clean urbanization because there is scope to develop a shared understanding of the problems and solutions.
