Managing a Tough Neighbourhood
India tried to stabilise its volatile periphery in 2024; it should play the long and pragmatic game to create more wins in 2025 India’s neighbourhood in 2024 remained in ferment, even as the country tried to steady its bilateral relationships in South Asia. Through the year, India worked to stabilize its periphery: engaging cautiously with […]
India’s Multi-Vector Engagement: Can It Include Pakistan?
A major question that arises in this context is whether India can reach tactical understandings, if not strategic resets, with its traditional regional adversaries, China and Pakistan. Both rivalries, at the very least, consume considerable strategic bandwidth and military resources. In the case of the northern neighbour, despite Chinese incursions into the Galwan Valley in 2020 followed by a military stand-off on the Himalayan border, India and China have doggedly continued military and diplomatic conversations to de-escalate the crisis and reach a modus vivendi. This has led to the stirrings of a tactical adjustment, with a Modi – Xi meeting in 2024 and softening positions in 2025.
Book Excerpt: Essays in Mutual Comprehension
Manmohan Singh added poetically that this meeting was ‘an essay in mutual comprehension’ and that the two leaders would together write a new chapter in the history of the two countries. Musharraf presented Singh a painting of the school in Gah village (now in Pakistan), the Indian PM’s birthplace, and where he had had his initial schooling. On his part Singh again recited the Urdu couplets which he had read out to Musharraf in their phone conversation.
12/13 The Parliament Attack
That afternoon, a group of officers from the PM’s security, the SPG, came in to my office. They were convinced that the PM was the primary target of the assault and thanked me for my fortuitous morning intervention. Our obsession in the PMO on ‘no pendency’ had prevented the prime minister’s carcade from crossing paths with the terrorists. Five days later, Home Minister Advani would confirm that ‘the terrorist assault on the very bastion of our democracy was clearly aimed at wiping out the country’s top political leadership.’
BOOK EXCERPT: A GRAB AT KASHMIR
The 1965 war was born of 1962, which left us looking like bumblers…. We foiled Pakistan’s resulting adventure, doubtless an achievement, albeit limited, but it turned Pakistan to other means: fomenting dissidence in our Punjab, feeding subversion elsewhere, developing terror as an instrument of policy, apart from making life difficult in J&K, while scheming its way to nuclear power. All comprehensively demonstrating an undying obsession—doing India down, wresting J&K.
Dealing with Pakistan: India’s Western Neighbour is No Longer a Strategic Priority
India’s Pakistan policy has evolved over the last decade, from an attempted rapprochement in 2014-15, to a focus on stringent border management and counterterrorism. Even though India’s primary strategic challenge over the next decade would emanate from the north i.e. China- the country’s most recalcitrant western neighbour will continue to pose a sub-conventional security threat.
BOOK EXCERPT: A TROUBLED FLIGHT IC814
As the ‘VIP carcade’ sped towards RCR, I spoke to Anand and then breathlessly told the prime minister that an Indian Airlines flight from Nepal had been hijacked and had landed at Amritsar airport; the crisis management group led by the cabinet secretary was in session and (the principal secretary) Brajesh Mishra was waiting at RCR to brief the prime minister on unfolding events.
RT TV: Let’s Talk Bharat with Anupam Kher
“The US-centered world has ended, in the new multipolar world order, India seeks a greater role.” -Ajay Bisaria Anupam Kher interviews former diplomat Ajay Bisaria, India’s last High Commissioner to Pakistan, who reflects on his tenure in the neighboring country and discusses what he believes to be the most significant issue in the often tense […]
Hybrid Pakistan
In the aftermath of brazenly rigged elections of 8 February, Pakistan has unveiled a new parliament, government, and cabinet of ministers, in a spectacle carefully choreographed by its military establishment.
Pak set for another selection
The most critical element of the polycrisis is the economic meltdown that the country faces, with inflation close to 40 percent, growing deficits, absent investment, stunted growth and mounting public anger. All this will require the new civilian regime to start knocking on the doors of the IMF for a grim 24th bailout program from June 2024.