After assuming office late last year, Admiral Sureesh Mehta, the Indian Navy chief made his maiden visit to UAE. At Abu Dhabi, he described West Asia as part of India's ‘strategic neighborhood’ and highlighted the importance of a regional security forum comprising of Persian Gulf littoral states modeled on the lines of the Western Pacific Naval Symposium (WPNS) where India has an observer status. The Admiral also called for greater bilateral naval engagements between Indian and UAE maritime forces.

There has been much ado over the neutral expert’s verdict on the Baglihar Hydel Project (BHP). For over sixteen years, the 450 Mega Watt (MW) BHP on the Chenab River in the Doda district of Jammu and Kashmir has been the bone of contention between India and Pakistan. After holding five meetings – in Paris, Geneva, London, Paris & Washington; visiting the project site, including its hydraulic model at Roorkee University and examining the written and oral submissions made by both parties, the final report of the neutral expert has given the BHP the ‘go ahead’.

At least 67 people have died, and many sustained burn injuries in the fire triggered by bomb blasts in Delhi- Attari Samjhauta Express on February 18, near Deewana in Panipat in Haryana. The bi-weekly train means 'Understanding,' a symbol of friendship that connects New Delhi to Pakistan's city of Lahore. The attacks took place ahead of Pakistani Foreign Minister Khursheed Kasuri’s visit to New Delhi for talks with his Indian counterpart on Tuesday. Kasuri is scheduled to co-chair the India-Pak Joint Commission in New Delhi.

Providing access to safe drinking water to all is being the prime target of each country’s development goal as prescribes by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The contentious issue is who will provide this basic service- public or private.

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.

Democracy is the most widely admired political system, but perhaps the most difficult to maintain. Democracy begins with excellent objectives in human governance with unquestionable intensions to impart freedom from injustice and social exclusion. It is characterised as a system in which expectations are raised because people identify themselves with the polity. There has been a greater urge for opening up the space for participation and competition in a state like Nepal which had a long history of monarchical domination.

Where Coal is gold, children’s education can be dumped! As the name suggests, the mining-savvy Orissa government has followed this in a small Matulu Camp village, a resettled habitation in the Rengali block of Sambalpur district in Orissa. There was a ‘school’, up to class 5th, in this village just three years ago. But, the school is now reminding a World War II concentration camp, where about 100 children of ten classes are being forced inside a dingy 20/15 ft room community centre building.

India’s space research programme has leaped to a new high with the successful launch of the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV-C7) from Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh, carrying four satellites, including a recoverable spacecraft on January 10, 2007. This group of four satellites constituted of two Indian makes and two foreign satellites. The foreign satellites belong to the category of micro and nano satellites weighing 56 and six kg respectively.

Since July 2005, a great deal of debate on the Indo-US nuclear cooperation has been focused on the separation of Indian civil and military facilities, especially fast breeder reactors (FBR). The rationale of New Delhi’s quest for energy security compromising its strategic interests has been widely questioned within political circles, among scientists and activists.

Every consent is manufactured on the basis of the kind of information disseminated. With the revolution in information technology (IT), public perception has been shaped in varied ways and on varied aspects for varied lengths. However, some issues remain in vogue in the public domain for decades owing to their perceived relative impact on human civilization. Here, the kind and nature of information disseminated on a phenomenon is more crucial than the real nature of the phenomenon itself. One such example is the idea of nuclear technology.