Global Indian News
Concerned about the escalating tensions between India and Pakistan, United Nations General Secretary Ban Ki-moon has urged the two subcontinental neighbours to resolve their issues through dialogue and peace. Mr Ban’s request …
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Look East. Look West. The multifarious relations between India and Vietnam are deepening by the day and are branching out in new directions. In many ways, it’s a perfect match between India’s Look East policy and Vietnam’s Look West policy as the two countries aim high to forge closer strategic, economic and energy ties in days to come. This confluence of interlinked interests will be reflected in the visit of India’s External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj to Vietnam August 25-26.
Blending IT, education, Buddhism and strategy in its intricate tapestry, the relations between India and Vietnam have effortlessly blended the ancient and the modern to forge a robust contemporary partnership. In the days to come, the only way for the Delhi-Hanoi relationship is to go up, opening new vistas and opportunities for a mutually invigorating and empowering partnership.
Making a compelling case for building an enduring bridge between India and the Arab world, India’s External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj has voiced deep concerns over “the rise of religious fanaticism, radical extremism and terrorism” in various parts of the region.
“Being a longstanding partner of the Arab world, we in India are also deeply concerned with the rise of fanaticism, extremism and terrorism in parts of the region,” Sushma Swaraj told journalists at the first India-Arab Media Symposium in New Delhi August 21.
“We are concerned for the stability of these countries where terrorism and fanaticism are tearing apart the fabric of societies and also concerned over the spill-over effects on regional stability,” said Swaraj, while underlining that “the fates of our two regions are intertwined in many ways.”
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The “neighbours first” policy of the new government in India will again be in focus when India’s External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj goes on her maiden visit to Myanmar August 8-9 for bilateral talks, as well as to attend ministerial meetings connected with ASEAN, East Asia Summit and ASEAN Regional Forum. Myanmar will be the first Southeast Asian country Sushma Swaraj will be visiting after trips to three important neighbours in South Asia: Bhutan, Bangladesh and Nepal. The minister’s visit will take place soon after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s path-breaking trip to Nepal, and underlines the centrality of immediate and extended neighbourhood in India’s foreign policy matrix.
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Look East. And follow the Asian Dream. Intertwining economies, interlinking destinies and creating an arc of prosperity across the region, India’s Look East Policy is cruising along on a higher trajectory. After putting India’s South Asia diplomacy in high gear, the new government in Delhi is now looking East as External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj heads to Myanmar, the chair of the 10—nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the 18-nation East Asia Summit (EAS). In Myanmar, the minister will participate in India-ASEAN ministerial meeting, ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) foreign ministers’ meeting and East Asia summit ministerial meeting. Put together, these separate but interlinked meetings reflect various facets of India’s Look East policy and will set the tone and tenor for the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Myanmar in November for the India-ASEAN summit and EAS.
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The “defining partnership of the 21st century” is poised for a new beginning as India and the US hold their first strategic dialogue this week after the installation of a new government in New Delhi. Re-energising the relationship, which is often seen by some to have plateaued after the high of the transformational civil nuclear deal of 2008, and mapping new frontiers of engagement will be the overarching focus of India’s External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and US Secretary of State John Kerry when they hold full-spectrum talks in New Delhi July 31.
The governments come and go, but the people of the two countries will make sure that India and the US will remain robustly engaged democracies, rejuvenating each other’s society and system with ideas, initiative and innovations, fulfilling the “extraordinary promise” of what President Obama has famously called “the defining partnership of the 21st century.”
It’s a journey that could prove to be path-breaking in mapping new horizons in the age-old India-Nepal relations. In her second stand-alone visit to a neighbouring country in South Asia, India’s External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj travels to Kathmandu July 25-27, an important trip that promises to usher in a new chapter between the two fraternal neigbours bound by deep ties of geography, nature, history and culture. The visit underscores yet again the primacy of South Asia in the foreign policy calculus of the new government in New Delhi and comes nearly two months after Prime Minister Narendra Modi hosted the leaders of SAARC countries for his swearing-in ceremony and a month after Mrs Sushma Swaraj visited Dhaka.
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Distances never came in the way of love affairs from blossoming or diplomacy’s perennial drive to interlink dreams and destines. Invoking India’s sage poet Rabindranath Tagore and Pablo Neruda, the beloved poet of desire, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has launched a multi-pronged Latin America charm offensive to deepen New Delhi’s engagement with this emerging growth pole of the world.
In a well-received speech in Brasilia at the BRICS’ outreach meeting with the leaders of South American countries July 16, Mr Modi offered an exhilarating brew of trade, IT, tele-medicine and capacity building to South America, which he called
“this great continent; of beauty, opportunities and warm people.”
It’s time for BRICS to move beyond summits and cement bonds among over three billion people living in the five emerging countries straddling the four continents. India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has rightly underlined the need for making BRICS “people-centric” and forging long-term partnership based on knowledge, skills and innovation.
If the BRICS leaders can think and act imaginatively by linking BRICS with surging dreams and aspirations of over three billion people living in India, China, Russia, Brazil, South Africa, it could be a game-changer in elevating the profile of the grouping and buttress its credentials as the voice of the developing world.
Don’t write off BRICS; bank on BRICS. The journey that started in Delhi two years ago culminated in the Brazilian seaside resort town of Fortaleza July 15, with the formal launch of a BRICS-patented New Development Bank that seeks to provide an alternative source of infrastructure finance to emerging economies and the larger developing world.
In a pithy and eloquent speech at the plenary session of the BRICS summit at the Ceara Convention Centre in Fortaleza, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi encapsulated the spirit and essence of the BRICS Bank. “The vision of a New Development Bank, at the Delhi Summit two years ago, has been translated into a reality, in Fortaleza. It will benefit BRICS nations, but will also support other developing nations. And, it will be rooted in our own experiences, as developing countries.”