Comment & Briefs

India has to not only fight over-consumption of resources in metropolitan cities but also make sure that the resources saved percolate down to its rural areas.

Afghanistan was a test case for our foreign policy resolve, an arena where while leveraging other tools of foreign policy, use of instruments of force and military diplomacy/intelligence should have been predominant.

India needs to engage Singapore more robustly so as to enable the forging of deeper and more broad-based friendships in the Southeast Asian region through Singapore’s good offices.

Though the target date for completing the 73 envisaged roads is 2012, only nine have so far been completed.

The Indian armed forces appear to be driving defence budgets rather than a cold calculation of the country’s desire for ‘adequate’ military capability.

Though the Indus Water Treaty apportions 80 per cent of the waters of the Indus River Basin to Pakistan and only 20 per cent to India, Pakistan is engaged in baseless allegations to inflame public opinion and project India as its number one threat.

While limitation in aims set is acknowledged as the primary way of conflict limitation, the point lost sight of usually on the politico-military facet is war termination.

While China has shown eagerness for the Dalai Lama’s return to China, it has categorically refused to take back the exiled Tibetan population based in India.

Adequacy or inadequacy of defence allocation largely lies in the manner it is spent keeping in view the defence requirements for meeting operational and strategic goals and to have the needed defence preparedness to deal with threats.

Karzai’s use of the word ‘proxy war’ in relation to India’s reconstruction and rehabilitation efforts can only be understood in view of the West’s fatigue in Afghanistan and the growing importance of Pakistan