IDSA Comments

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) recently issued a new set of rules for the procurement of arms, ammunition and other defence related products and services. The rule book, known as Defence Procurement Procedure 2008 (DPP 2008), has revised, among others, the offset policy that was first promulgated in 2005 and subsequently revised in 2006. The revised offset policy which retains the earlier minimum 30 per cent offset requirements in defence imports of Rs. 300 crore or more has added a provision of offset banking, besides enlisting a number of categories of defence products.

• Laxman Kumar Behera |
• August 19, 2008 |
• IDSA Comments

Two co-ordinated strikes on July 25 and 26, 2008 in Bengaluru and Ahmedabad killed 54 people and injured nearly 200. In the next few days, 28 bombs including two car bombs were found in Surat, which possibly did not explode due to faulty mechanism. This set of incidents seems to mark a new terrorist tactic – the targeting of important cities to cause significant casualties. Serial blasts of this kind began in India with the October 2005 co-ordinated strikes in New Delhi.

• T. Khurshchev Singh |
• August 12, 2008 |
• IDSA Comments

Russia’s new President Dmitry Medvedev has put forward a fresh foreign policy blueprint and set forth a brand new idea of a Pan-European Security structure, which envisages a role for India in Euro-Atlantic affairs. The 7,000 word document makes a turn from the earlier roadmap that guided Putin’s agenda. Medvedev seeks no “Great Power” status but wants Russia to be one of the influential centres of the world. Not exactly distinct in form from Putin’s doctrine, the new concept entails style and diplomatic nuance; it talks about abandoning ‘bloc diplomacy’ in favour of ‘network diplomacy’.

• P. Stobdan |
• August 07, 2008 |
• IDSA Comments

SAARC has in recent years attracted wide international attention and generated much interest among countries that now hold Observer status. The 15th Summit held in Colombo on August 2 – 3, 2008 renewed its pledge to take SAARC from a declaratory to the implementation stage. Four agreements were signed at the Summit on mutual assistance to address criminal activities, trade, combating terrorism and climate change. The theme of the 41-point Colombo Declaration announced at the end of the Summit was “Partnership for Growth for Our People.”

• Smruti S. Pattanaik |
• August 07, 2008 |
• IDSA Comments

The low-intensity bombs that blew up in Ahmedabad and Bangalore have thrown light on the challenges before India’s intelligence agencies. Not only are the agencies unsure of who is behind the attack, the terrorists remain faceless. The obvious question to ask is: why has there been a spate of low-intensity bombings in small markets as opposed to say, the high-intensity bombing of a strategic location?

• Prakarsh Singh |
• August 07, 2008 |
• IDSA Comments

At a time when Pakistan’s phenomenal economic growth of the past few years under the Musharraf regime has hit a severe road block, the country’s Trade Minister Ahmed Mukhtar, who also holds the defence portfolio, announced a new trade policy on July 18, 2008. The announcement of the new trade policy has been governed by the state of Pakistan’s economy, which has been on a downward spiral since February.

• Alok Bansal |
• August 05, 2008 |
• IDSA Comments

Though the recent Indo-Bangladesh Foreign Secretary level talks held in New Delhi made significant progress on several issues, there was no forward movement on the issue of connectivity. Bangladesh remains reluctant to extend this facility to India, though bilateral relations have generally been trouble-free in the last two years.

• Anand Kumar |
• August 04, 2008 |
• IDSA Comments

Game theory is the analysis of strategic interaction among agents. These agents may be two or more people, firms or countries, with both taking into account how the other agent will “play”. Game theory has been employed to increase revenue at auctions, better equip challengers against incumbents in the market, and explain why bad dictators last so long.

• Prakarsh Singh |
• July 31, 2008 |
• IDSA Comments

Rising food and oil prices worldwide have increased the misery of people in Bangladesh who have already been suffering the effects of near double digit inflation. The military backed caretaker government has been forced to increase the prices of oil products by 33 to 67 per cent with effect from July 1, 2008. Diesel and kerosene prices have been hiked by 37.5 per cent to 55 taka a litre (0.26 gallons) and petrol prices by 34 per cent to 87 taka a litre.

• Anand Kumar |
• July 30, 2008 |
• IDSA Comments

If anybody thought that a change of talk in the Bush administration’s Iran policy would be enough to induce the “isolated” Tehran to give up its intransigence and toe the western line, the July 19 meeting proved him or her wrong. Before the Geneva meeting between Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili and European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana, the US sent feelers to Tehran.

• Stanly Johny |
• July 25, 2008 |
• IDSA Comments

The three day International Islamic Conference on Inter-faith Dialogue (also known as World Dialogue Conference) organised by the Saudi Arabia based World Muslim League (WML) was held in Madrid from July 16 to 18, 2008. Touted to be the brainchild of Saudi king Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz, the conference was attended by around 300 religious leaders and scholars from across the world representing Islam, Hinduism, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Shintoism, Confucianism and other religions.

• Prasanta Kumar Pradhan |
• July 25, 2008 |
• IDSA Comments

The spate of talks and meetings between India and Bangladesh is unmatched in recent times. This pace alone sets bilateral relations apart from the five long years when the BNP-led coalition government was in power (2000-05) in Bangladesh. The recent (July 17, 2008) Foreign Secretary level talks have once again brought home the fact of how the interim government in Bangladesh without having to pander to any particular constituency has been able to constructively engage with its largest neighbour.

• Sreeradha Datta |
• July 24, 2008 |
• IDSA Comments

While addressing the customary press conference after the Foreign Secretary level talks with Pakistan on July 21, 2008, the Indian Foreign Secretary stated that the India-Pakistan dialogue is “under stress” and Pakistan must address New Delhi’s concerns about cross-border terrorism. The talks were held in the shadow of the recent attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul, which, India alleges, had the involvement of “elements in Pakistan”. The Indian Foreign Secretary also admitted that the ongoing ceasefire on the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir has come under strain.

• Satinder K. Saini |
• July 23, 2008 |
• IDSA Comments

Nagaland has been up in flames for quite sometime now. For the past eight months or so, heavy inter-factional killings between the National Socialist Council of Nagalim-Isak-Muivah [NSCN (IM)], the National Socialist Council of Nagaland-Khaplang [NSCN (K)], and the newly formed National Socialist Council of Nagaland-Unification [NSCN (U)], have been vitiating the atmosphere there. On July 9, clashes between the NSCN (IM) and the NSCN (U) in Diphupar village led to the death of a few insurgents.

• Namrata Goswami |
• July 23, 2008 |
• IDSA Comments

The July 7 attack on the Indian Embassy in Kabul which left 58 people dead including four Indians and more than 140 wounded was a highly provocative act. Those responsible for the attack are well known, and their objectives are also not a matter of speculation. It is understood that the Indian government should be taking far more stringent security measures to minimise the recurrence of such attacks on its embassy, consulates, and reconstruction projects in Afghanistan.

• Vishal Chandra |
• July 18, 2008 |
• IDSA Comments

In many ways the story of Punjab is anomalous to the stylized facts of civil war literature. Empirical literature on civil wars points to a negative correlation between income and likelihood of conflict. There is also cross-country evidence to suggest that rough terrain contributes to greater possibility of violence. Both these facts did not hold in the case of Punjab. However, recent research on terrorism supports the view that terrorism is not correlated with poverty and lower education levels.

• Prakarsh Singh |
• July 18, 2008 |
• IDSA Comments

Ordnance Factories constitute a major segment of India’s defence industrial set- up, whose other constituents are the Defence Public Sector Undertakings (DPSUs), the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and varied Service-specific workshops, repair and maintenance establishments. The gross production of ordnance factories during the year 2005-06 was Rs. 8811.59 crores. Total sales including issues to armed forces and other agencies and civil trade in the same year was Rs. 6891.68 crores. This constitutes approximately 40 per cent of domestic supplies to the armed forces.

• N. Neihsial |
• July 17, 2008 |
• IDSA Comments

Now that the IAEA Draft Agreement is on the World Wide Web and the Communists have withdrawn their support to the UPA, it is reasonable to assume that the next few steps will also follow in good time. The alacrity with which the Americans have drafted their letter to the 45 members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group is remarkable and shows that the Bush administration is indeed very keen to see the deal through before its term ends at the end of the year. What we are not so sure of, however, is the future of the UPA and the Congress.

• Ramesh Phadke |
• July 17, 2008 |
• IDSA Comments

The July 7 gruesome attack on the Indian Embassy in Kabul, which resulted in the loss of over 40 lives including those of two senior diplomats, is clearly a high value symbolic attack directed at coercing India into scaling down its growing presence in rebuilding war ravaged Afghanistan. It is a clear reminder, following as it does a series of low and small scale attacks on Indians in previous months and years, that the Indian presence is continuing to hamper the interests of Pakistan which is bent upon regaining its lost ‘strategic depth’ in that country.

• Shanthie Mariet D'Souza |
• July 09, 2008 |
• IDSA Comments

On the face of it, India and NATO are poles apart. NATO is a military alliance. India is a non-aligned country with an independent foreign policy. Any engagement between India and NATO is, therefore, problematic.

• Arvind Gupta |
• July 08, 2008 |
• IDSA Comments