India and the World

Counter-terror meet: ISIS hasn’t influenced Indian Muslims

- by India Writes Network

India’s Home Minister Rajnath Singh has inaugurated the-three day counter terrorism conference in Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan. The conference focuses on the integrated approach to counter terrorism and provides a platform to a wide array of professionals involved in counterterrorism analysis and practice from world over to explore the nature of terror threats in current times and strategies to overcome them.
In his inaugural address, Mr. Singh expressed happiness at the negligible impact of ISIS on the country’s youth. He said that Indian Muslims were ‘patriots’ and that ISIS has failed to influence them since the community is complete integrated in the national mainstream. Of the handful of Indian youth who had joined the ISIS, some had even returned after being persuaded by their families.

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India condemns Tunisia terror attack, calls for global action

- by India Writes Network

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Pranab Mukherjee have condemned the terror attack in Tunisia and underlined that New Delhi stands firmly with the people of the country in this hour of attack.

“Attack in Tunisia is appalling & condemnable. We stand firmly with the people of Tunisia in this hour of grief and pray normalcy return soon,” Mr Modi said via twitter.

The attack on foreigners in Tunisia, the birthplace of the Arab Spring, appeared to be the worst since the al-Qaeda suicide bombing killing 14 Germans, two French and five Tunisian on the Island of Djerba in 2002.

The brutal militant group, The Islamic State, is suspected to have links with the Tunisia attack, which has once again underlined the trans-national nature of terrorism, fuelled by radical Islamist groups and ideologies.

The U.N. Security Council has condemned the Bardo museum terror spree, saying that no terrorist action can reverse the path of Tunisia toward democracy.

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Netanyahu scores victory in Israel polls

- by India Writes Network

Benjamin Netanyahu has scored a “resounding victory” in Israel’s polls and looks set to form a right-wing coalition in Tel Aviv.
Mr Netanyahu’s Likud Party defeated Zionist Union, led by Issac Herzog.
Mr Netanyahu, the chairman of Likud Party, boasts of nine years of office in three terms, with limited political achievements. He is poised to form a new government and serve the fourth term in the Knesset, making him the longest running prime minister of the country.
Mr Netanyahu promised to form the new government quickly. “Our country’s everyday reality doesn’t give us the luxury for delay,” he said in a statement.
“The citizens of Israel rightfully expect that we will act quickly and responsibly to establish a leadership that will work for them in areas of defense, the economy and society just as we promised in this campaign — and just like we will now set ourselves towards doing,” he added.

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It’s India’s moment, Chak de India: IMF chief

- by India Writes Network

“It’s India’s moment; seize it. Chak de India!” This ringing endorsement of an upswing in India’s economic fortunes from the IMF chief should be music to the ears of India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his core economic team, who are shepherding the second-generation economic reforms in Asia’s third largest economy.
Christine Lagarde, the chief of the International Monetary Fund, has betted big on the India growth story and underlined that India continues to be a bright spot when the global economic recovery continues to be “too slow, too brittle and too lopsided.”

Downbeat on the prospects of global economy, but upbeat on India, Lagarde reiterated the IMF’s forecast on the world economy, saying that more than six years after the global financial crisis, the world economy is expected to grow by just 3.5 percent this year and 3.7 percent in 2015.

“I want a larger quota of India at the IMF. This is India’s moment; seize it. Chak de India!” she said.

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Modi’s Sri Lanka visit: Mapping the road ahead

- by India Writes Network

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recently-concluded visit to Sri Lanka did not generate any big bang commitments, but laid out an ambitious roadmap for providing more economic substance and strategic heft to this crucial bilateral relationship.
Mr Modi’s visit was rife with symbolism as well as substance, and emphasised on shared cultural relations and economic and security concerns to pave way for a long-term partnership.
The Sri Lankan visit ought to be seen within the larger rubric of the Indian Ocean Region diplomacy: China’s overtures to gain strategic in roads in India’s neighbourhood with economic investments, India’s new government pushing for dynamism in the economy, and India’s aspirations in a multipolar world. There has been a subtle shift in envisioning the region as well. While China pushes the Maritime Silk Road project, India’s ‘Mausam’ initiative, seeks to project soft power, and revive cultural linkages among the Indian Ocean littoral, showing India’s desire to move to a new regional identity (beyond SAARC), and ensuring a leadership role within it.

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New bounce in India-Sri ties: 4 pacts, $318 million for railways, currency swap

- by India Writes Network

Imparting a renewed momentum to their bilateral ties, India and Sri Lanka have signed four agreements in areas of visa, customs, youth development and culture during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s maiden visit to the island country.
Mr Modi also pledged support for making Trincomalee into a petroleum hub and announced that New Delhi will provide a fresh Line of Credit of up to $ 318 million for the development of the railways sector in Lanka. India also agreed to a ‘Currency Swap Agreement’ of $1.5 billion to help keep the Sri Lankan economy stable.
Mr Modi held wide-ranging talks with Sri Lankan President MaithripalaSirisena in Colombo on March 13 that saw the two leaders charting a roadmap for galvanising their multifaceted ties. The four pacts, signed after the talks, included providing facility of travelling without visa to diplomats, cooperation in customs, youth development, and for establishing a Rabindranath Tagore museum.
The India-Sri Lanka relations had languished during the last few years of the MahindaRajapaksa presidency due to his overtly pro-China policies. Mr Sirisena underlined his intention known of building robust relations with New Delhi by making India his first foreign visit within weeks of taking charge as the president of the island nation.

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Delhi-Colombo Bonding: New Frontiers

- by Manish Chand

New Beginnings, New Hopes and New Horizons.
These expressions may sound like rhetorical hyperboles to some, but summarise the essence of the current transformational moment in relations between India and Sri Lanka, which has acquired a new bounce and energy after the formation of the new government in Colombo in January this year.
All eyes in the region will be on the meeting between Mr Modi and Mr Sirisena as they unveil an ambitious roadmap for multi-pronged acceleration of bilateral ties across diverse areas, including trade and investment, development cooperation, defence cooperation and reconstruction of the island nation.
With the new government in Colombo upbeat about dovetailing the India story to that of the island’s unfolding resurgence, the sky is virtually the limit for India-Sri Lanka relations.
Expect new doors to open up in this time-tested relationship.

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India Recalibrates its Indian Ocean Strategy

- by India Writes Network

The new Indian government, probably for the first time, seems to be recalibrating its stance towards adopting a structured policy towards the Indian Ocean Region (IOR), which hitherto carried no more significance than an anagrammatic similarity between the region and the country. The pre-election promise of the Sagar Mala Project in BJP manifesto, the push to demilitarise the Indian Ocean (IO) through the Galle Dialogue in 2014, Prime Minister’s heightened focus on its littoral neighbours, and most recently Prime Minister Modi’s visit to three island countries (Seychelles, Mauritius and Sri Lanka), which did not figure prominently in India’s regional geopolitical calculus, corroborate India’s intended policy seriousness towards the IOR.

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