Maoists and the Armed Forces

Armed forces personnel hailing from the Red Corridor are being subjected to intimidation and extortion by the Maoists for at least two decades now. The families of the servicemen residing in their native places are being forced to part with their hard earned money to fill the coffers of the Maoists.

The Rajapaksa Model of Defeating Terror

The Tiger’s Lair • Interveiw with President Mahinda Rajapaksa • Badulla Model: Forging a new Nationhood • Striking Oil 
1: The Tiger’s Lair
In the first week of August I drove from Colombo to Vavuniya air base in northern Sri Lanka accompanied by a military escort, a Major in the Sri Lankan Army (SLA). As soon as we [...]

The Fragile Af-Pak Policy

With each passing day, it is becoming increasingly obvious that the Obama administration’s so-called Af-Pak policy is simply not working. The fraudulent Presidential elections in Afghanistan, coupled by the rampant corruption in all walks of life in that hapless country, have not made the NATO-propped Karzai government in Kabul either stable or popular.

Guns versus Butter

India, with limited resources and rising aspirations, faces the age old “guns versus butter” question, which has become even more complex in the era of terrorism, piracy, insurgency, in the backdrop of large conventional forces facing us along our borders with nuclear armed neighbors, China and Pakistan. The nation is already under attack by terrorists, [...]

Pakistan: The Counter-Strategy

In the big picture of the Pakistani game plan, Kargil is merely a footnote. Pakistan’s end game is to cause as much destruction within India by activating direct insurgency in Kashmir, extending support to terrorist activities in the Northeast and supplying arms and explosives to sow seeds of dissent within the country against the legitimately [...]

India’s Foreign Policy : A Muddle for Sixty Two Years

Introduction
The India-Pakistan joint statement at Sharm-al-Sheikh during the NAM conference in which Balochistan was mentioned for no rational reasons has once again brought into sharp focus, lack of direction, absence of any strategic thought and a shocking unawareness of our national interest on part of our foreign policy establishment. Those who have been carefully following [...]

Prospects for Democratization in Myanmar: Impact on India

According to the military junta that rules Myanmar,1 the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) is on the cusp of the completion in 2010 of its self-ordained “roadmap” to a form of “democracy” in the country – an election, the inauguration of a bicameral representative national legislature, local legislatures, and the operational stage of the [...]

Defence PSUs : The Great Betrayl

Introduction
When the saras crashed, killing its crew, the deafening silence in the media, as also from those who know about flight testing, design and manufacture of aeroplanes, and the unforeseen dangers in this activity, was rudely apparent. What is the Saras for? Who would use it? What kind of pilots would fly such a piece [...]