For the Indian climate crusaders, 2007 has become more important for three reasons. First, the entry of climate change as an agenda item to the United Nations Security Council on April 18. Now, the Nobel Peace Prize to the scientific community - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and former US Vice-President Al Gore for making people aware of climate change. It’s argued that the issue would become everybody’s business to know, manage and resolve after the prestigious award.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has a geopolitical dimension that people outside the foreign policy circuit in India may not be sufficiently aware of. The ASEAN has always wanted to influence the shape of the regional order in Southeast Asia and the role of major powers in it. How can a group of ten relatively small countries aspire to manage the geopolitics of a region that is stalked by military or economic giants like the US and Japan and rising behemoths like China and India with populations of more than one billion each?
Remember Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf’s high-profile meeting and the promises at Havana (Cuba) on the sidelines of the NAM (Non-Alignment Movement) summit in mid-September 2006. One year has passed since both leaders agreed to have a joint anti-terror mechanism (ATM) to identify and implement counter-terrorism initiatives and investigations. It was considered significant then.
‘Estranged democracies’ is how Dennis Kux once characterised relations between the US and India. For much of India’s independent history, Kux’s characterisation hit the nail on the head. A norm of suspicion about the Americans seemed to have institutionalised itself within India’s strategic culture, and there were good reasons for this.
More than a decade after the opening of India, the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) probably has become the most controversial economic reform announced recently. While some consider it India’s supersonic engine of growth, others severely criticize it as the latest land grab instrument in the hands of the industrialists. Serious discourses on development models, displacement and rehabilitation, employment generation, foreign investment, and the primacy of industry over agriculture are being raised in justification and against the whole concept of SEZ.