In March 1971, I was working on an Oxfam-UK supported Gandhian village development project in Bihar, India, where I had been for almost three years. Through the BBC and some sketchy Indian newspaper reports, I learnt about the unrest in Dacca in the early part of March 1971. Sheikh Mujib’s speech of 7 March was well reported by The Statesman newspaper which always reached Gaya from Calcutta one day late. However, nobody was prepared for what would unfold later that month.

• Julian Francis |
• November 2021 |
• Strategic Analysis

Question: 01: How relevant was 1971 for you, both in political and cultural sense?

• Tanvir Mokammel |
• November 2021 |
• Strategic Analysis

The tale of Bangladesh’s liberation war of 1971 cannot be told without the ‘before’ and a bit of the ‘after’ of that year, as it would then turn into a futile exercise in historicism,2 merely, ‘capturing’ that instant of extensive explosion which ascended like the phoenix, while ignoring the intensive seedbed of creative ‘becoming’ from which it arose.

• Lubna Marium |
• November 2021 |
• Strategic Analysis

India’s role in the liberation war is often seen through the geopolitical prism. Its response to developments in East Pakistan was complex and evolved over a period of time. Before taking recourse to military action, India exhausted its diplomatic initiatives to draw the attention of the international community to the refugee crisis which arose due to the Pakistan Army-perpetuated genocide – a term first used by India in the Parliament Resolution of 31 March.

• Smruti S. Pattanaik |
• November 2021 |
• Strategic Analysis

• Abhishek Verma |
• September 2021 |
• Strategic Analysis

Shakti Sinha, Vajpayee: The Years that Changed India, Penguin/Vintage Books, New Delhi, 2020, 368 pp., Rs.599.00 (Hardback), ISBN: 9780670093441

• Ahmed Raza |
• September 2021 |
• Strategic Analysis

• Lokendra Sharma |
• September 2021 |
• Strategic Analysis

• Shamshad A. Khan |
• September 2021 |
• Strategic Analysis

The landmark virtual summit between Prime Ministers Narendra Modi and Scott Morrison in June 2020 led to ties being upgraded to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. Australia’s High Commissioner to India alluded to the four D’s—Democracy, Defence, Diaspora, Dosti (friendship), with increased focus on Defence. In the India–Australia partnership, the emphasis is on maritime security cooperation, Quad 2.0, the Malabar exercises as well as cyber security and intelligence cooperation.

• Pankaj K Jha , Shaun Star |
• September 2021 |
• Strategic Analysis

This article examines India’s defence expenditure over the past ten years. In so doing, it provides a public finance perspective to explain the recurring resource crunch being faced by the Ministry of Defence (MoD). The article reasons that a substantial augmentation of resources for the MoD in the past has faced stiff barriers due to lack of tax buoyancy and also the political, economic and other exigencies that have led to greater public spending outside the traditional areas of expenses, including defence.

• Laxman Kumar Behera , Pabitra Mohan Nayak |
• September 2021 |
• Strategic Analysis