India and the World

Less rhetoric, more trade. This seemed to be the reigning mantra at the “Pakistan Show” in Amritsar, charming visitors with a wide array of merchandise from across the border, including exquisite carpets, textiles and dry fruits.

India’s connect to Central Asia in the middle of the election fever in the country, as telescoped in the May 7-9 visit of Foreign Secretary Sujatha Singh to Tajikistan, underlines the growing strategic importance of the resource-rich region.

President Barack Obama visited Japan on April 24-25 as part of his four-nation Asian trip that included South Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines. The fact that a US President visited Japan as a state guest for the first time in the last 18 years gave it considerable symbolic significance and seriousness.

The people of Bangladesh are closely watching the election-related developments in India. Reports say that the Sheikh Hasina regime wants to see a stable government in India for all round development of the region. In some quarters, questions have been raised about the future of India-Bangla ties following the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. The Bangladeshi intelligentsia is anxious to know if there would be paradigm shift in the bilateral relations after May 16.

Amid the frenzy and fever of the world’s most colourful elections, India’s diplomacy is quietly and meaningfully humming along as the country’s foreign secretary and senior diplomats head east, west, north and south, in quest of new opportunities unleashed by a rapidly globalising world.

In a boost for India’s energy diplomacy in the resource-rich Central Asia, Kazakhstan has offered ONGC Videsh Ltd (OVL), the overseas arm of the country’s oil major ONGC, a stake …

The guessing game can go on, but with barely a fortnight to go before the results of parliamentary elections are declared, Pakistan has signalled its readiness to restart the dialogue process with India after a new government is installed in Delhi later in May.

Any outcome statement that describes itself as non-binding and as one that “hopefully contributes to the evolution of the internet governance ecosystem” sets itself up to being judged harshly by …