BRICS is not challenging the existing world order. It is seeking a place in the sun for developing countries. It is looking at alternative approaches but there is no desire to seek confrontation with the West.
Now that NAM is defunct and very little wealth is left in the Commonwealth, and given that the G-20 has a set parameter and doesn’t encompass the aggregate of the hopes and aspirations of the developing world, India should use the BRICS forum to project its global profile.
By now making software development ineligible for discharge of offsets we might be depriving ourselves of what was considered necessary only a couple of months ago. This could also prove to be a setback for the Indian software industry.
If the BRICS Development Bank comes up, it will not only be a big moment for BRICS itself, but also for the global financial structure where the role, stake and space of the developing world will grow massively.
“Innovation” has become a buzz word in recent science and technology policies of various countries. It has also been given ample importance in the science and technology policies and programmes of India, China and Pakistan. It is interesting to know on what exactly these countries are focusing in their recent science and technology policies and how these new policies and programmes will help them in social development, economic growth, technology innovation and pursuing national interests.
A GDP growth of less than seven per cent combined with the fiscal consolidation path that the Finance Minister has articulated in his budget speech means a lot of pressure on the defence ministry whose plan for current and future expenditure up to 2017 is based on past GDP growth rate of 8 to 9 per cent.
There is a need for an overhaul of the defence planning and budgeting systems to make them outcome oriented, which will lead to the development and maintenance of requisite capability through the defence forces as an entity over a specified long-term horizon.
In the larger scheme of things, fiscal prudence is a good trait and the reduction in deficits desirable, yet an overtly ambitious approach of reducing deficits into a number game may lead to developments that may hurt us not only in the security arena but in economic growth as well.
A National Counter Terrorism Head needs to be established with the single point authority for all CT activity and with authorization to muster all resources within the country. The authority vested in him will be matched by his accountability to every terrorist strike.
While the anguish over the state of modernization of the armed forces, the slow march towards achieving the capability for simultaneous action on two-fronts and rather feeble power projection on a global scale are understandable, what is not understandable is the expectation that the outlays for achieving these objectives would increase exponentially, irrespective of the state of the economy.
