Comment
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Articles
Their day in the sun The South Sudanese minister of information, Barnaba Marial, wells up at the thought of independence for his nation. It is bigger than his wedding day, he says; the biggest day of his life.
A new nation is born By Ban Ki-moon For the more than eight million citizens of South Sudan, July 9, is a momentous and emotional day. In January, they voted in an historic referendum to separate from the rest of Sudan. That they did so peacefully is a credit to both the North and South Sudanese leadership.
As South Sudan emerges, spotlight on Uganda By Josh Kron In the last two decades, Uganda has helped bring three surrounding governments to power — in Sudan, Rwanda and Congo.
'We are partners in resurgence' In this interview with Manish Chand, India’s External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna speaks about myriad facets of the burgeoning partnership between India and Africa that is moving beyond the political and economic to acquire a more strategic complexion.
India-Africa summit: from agreement to action By Rajiv Bhatia When Dr. Manmohan Singh was the Secretary General of South Commission over two decades back, he worked with its chairman Julius Nyerere, a respected African leader and the former President of Tanzania. This relationship might have moulded Dr. Singh's perceptions on challenges facing Africa and how India should partner with it to secure a multi-dimensional partnership benefitting both sides. This explains, at least partly, why the second India-Africa Forum Summit (IAFS-II), followed by the Prime Minister's bilateral visits to Ethiopia and Tanzania, represents the high water mark in India's engagement with Africa. The recent safari may owe much to the legacy of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. But, above all, it was a well-designed initiative by Dr. Singh's team to position India-Africa relations in the specific context of 21st century.
India-Africa partnership reaching at momentum The interest of various countries towards building partnership with Africa has ever rising from time to time. For long, those developed countries highly intertwined with African countries were not as such many and the same venture that the emerging economy countries have handled the partnership. African countries have many things in common with emerging economies like India and their partnership are more fundamental, crucial and both government to government as well as people to people.
Trade between India and Ethiopia is rising: Gennet Zewide “The last thing I want to do before I leave office is to help facilitate and achieve the agreements the two countries have made,” says Gennet Zewide, Ethiopia’s Ambassador to India.
India’s leap of faith from a taker to a giver By Mahendra Ved That India can give credit worth billions to other nations was unthinkable a decade ago. Thanks to a resurgent economy, from being a taker for so long, it has turned giver, changing its approach, and a good bit of image, with the outside world.
India Africa Summit The second Africa-India Summit convened in Addis, (the political capital of Africa) this past week. The initial launching, or the first Africa-India Summit was held in New Delhi in 2008. Previously, the Chinese had launched their version of Africa-China Summit in Beijing (2006) followed by their second summit in Sharm el-Sheikh (Egypt.) Latin Americans, particularly Venezuela and Brazil also flirted with the same idea, but they lost momentum once the global financial/economic crisis deepened. Prior to that, we have been having all sorts of ‘cooperation summits’, mostly initiated by the developed countries. TICAD (Japan) has been going on for decades. The EU-Africa Summit was first held in Cairo in 2000 and the second one in Lisbon, (2006) etc. Therefore it is not surprising to see population rich, but resource not-so-rich, India and China seriously courting ‘virgin’ Africa.
Long timid in international affairs, India is starting to make waves For all its elephantine weight, India has long shown mouselike diplomatic clout. Historically, its diplomacy was constrained by poverty at home, fraught relations with neighbours, notably Pakistan and China, and an anxiety to avoid taking sides in the cold war. Even today, its foreign service remains woefully understaffed: both New Zealand and Singapore have more serving diplomats. Now India is trying harder to get noticed.
Taking India abroad By Mihir S Sharma Politically, India is unique. No democracy so large and diverse has grown like it has; and our political parties, left, right and fragmentary, have come to a quiet agreement that economic growth is essential — and spreading its benefits a bit makes it politically sustainable. Our politics is noisily divided, but on this, the most crucial of political points, every major formation at state and Centre agrees.
Trading a new route By M.K.Venu India has completely rebranded its partnerships in Africa. India can differentiate itself from China if the government does its job of partnering with Africa in institutional capacity building and the private sector takes the lead in creating new markets for goods and services on a sustained basis.
Creating colleges for a continent By Vijay Mahajan Much has been said and written about the Indian demographic dividend -the young population that is actively fuelling the economic and consumer markets of India. Africa, however, is ahead of any other region of the developing world in youthfulness.
India's stake in Africa's future By Siddharth Varadarajan More than any other region, it is Africa that has to be a strategic priority for India. What we must offer is a partnership no other power is willing or able to extend to the continent.
India's hour in Africa By Rajiv Bhatia Higher political visibility will help accelerate its drive into the continent.
Build on the positives By Lalita Panicker India seems to be getting it right when it comes to the fight against HiV/Aids: infection rates have dipped by half over the last decade and we have also realised the advantages of working with affected communities.
India acts maturely vis-à-vis rattled Pakistan By Amulya Ganguli India's readiness to continue talking with Pakistan despite the "sensational" event of Osama bin Laden's death is open to several interpretations. One is that since the Al Qaeda leader's presence in Pakistan has put a final seal on its longstanding reputation as an "epicentre of terror", India probably feels that its own case has been bolstered so much that it can afford to be forgiving about its neighbour's criminal transgressions.
India's 300 mn mobile phone 'ghosts' By Prasanto K. Roy A few days ago, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), the industry watchdog, said the country's mobile phone subscriber base had reached an astounding 812 million, adding 20 million new connections in March. That should have been quite a milestone -- going past the 800-million mark and inching toward 70 percent tele-density.
BRICS set to outshine IBSA? By Rajiv Bhatia When BRICS speaks, its views are bound to receive much greater notice than those of IBSA. If IBSA does not become stronger, it will become irrelevant.
Did India grow faster than China in 2010? By Chidanand Rajghatta The intense debate about whether lumbering India can overtake China's red hot economy has been fed more fuel with The Economist suggesting that it may already have happened in 2010 "without anyone as much as noticing".
The Hazare movement: Making India a true beacon of democracy By Sudip Mazumdar As Indians rise in protest and rally around Anna Hazare's crusade against corruption, the corrupt and the opportunist are looking for cover. The swelling resolve to birth a movement that would usher in real democracy with transparency and accountability as hallmarks is slowly assuming unprecedented levels. (Anna hazare is a social activist from India).
EXPERIMENTS WITH GANDHI Everybody has their own idea of Gandhi who may be more relevant today than ever before. So why all the fuss about a book?
India-Pak semi-final: Manmohan Singh's cricket diplomacy may prove the winner By C Uday Bhaskar Metonymy is not the kind of word one would use in a newspaper column, much less for the frenzy that has enveloped Mohali - where cricket fervor peaked for the India-Pakistan World Cup semifinal encounter.. Across the urban landscape of the sub-continent, as the night advanced, one could follow the fortunes of the two opposing teams by the sheer shift in the decibel level of millions of spectators glued to television.
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0159 IST, Wednesday, July 13, 2011
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