As coincidence would have it, S Jaishankar’s Colombo visit comes back-to-back after one by a Chinese ministerial delegation
The Tamil Nadu governor walked out of the assembly amid row with chief minister MK Stalin over his speech
One is the Centre’s affidavit in the Supreme Court, and the other is a parliamentary statement made by none other than External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, both on different aspects of the fishers’ issue
This may be an opportunity for Indian strategic thinkers to come up with out-of-the-box solutions, where India can create a global constituency to call its own, independent of the US, Russia or Europe, and without a UNSC veto
Diplomatic decency demands that the US and the rest of the West do not carry the ‘colonial baggage’ that they alone know what is good for the world
Can Election Commissioners, whether promotees or others, be given such fixed terms, say, two, three or five years? In a way, the promotees won’t need much of learning time, which is essential for outsiders
India, and India alone, has positioned itself in a way, though mostly unintentionally, where it could be of help, if at all any nation can help
There has been a rise in anti-India activities in Canada, the latest being a park named after the Bhagavad Gita vandalised in Brampton
The next few days are as crucial for deciding the future of the nation’s politics as the past many weeks
India’s continuing humanitarian assistance, aimed exclusively at aiding the people, has been mischievously interpreted in Sri Lanka as New Delhi propping up the ‘unpopular’ Rajapaksas in office
It could well become the ‘new normal’ in Sri Lanka where ship-to-mouth existence would have to continue for an indeterminable length of time
There is a need for India as the unnamed leader of the grouping to keep an open mind lest the CSC experiment should fail on a future day.
Though India signed its first Free Trade Agreement with Sri Lanka in the late 1990s, upgrading it at the appropriate time has remained an uphill task.
India is still a developing country. It has to measure what it can give others and also evaluate the return on investments at every turn.
It suited China’s strategic intent to let Indians believe Beijing and Colombo were caught in a political fight over Beijing’s supply of fertilisers to Colombo, and the latter denying payment over quality.