Articles By Prakash Nanda

Revisiting the Defence Acquisitions
By: Prakash Nanda | Date: 15 Feb , 2013
Predictably, the present scam involving the VVIP chopper deal that has surfaced following the arrest of key officials of the firm that produces Augusta Westland -101 choppers in Italy has been...

Pakistan’s Hybrid War
By: Prakash Nanda | Date: 10 Jan , 2013
A peculiarly important news item that I came across while writing this column (January 10) is about the Manmohan Singh government’s decision to implement the visa-on-arrival facility at the...

The Maldivian Shock
By: Prakash Nanda | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 29 Nov , 2012
While writing the history of Indian diplomacy 25 years hence, any dispassionate historian will agree that the Manmohan Singh government’s neighbourhood policy has been a monumental failure. It...

Maoists as political prisoners?
By: Prakash Nanda | Issue: Courtesy: Uday India | Date: 27 Sep , 2012
Two recent judicial pronouncements form West Bengal Courts have very dangerous implications for the country’s security and integrity. The first one was by the High Court and second was by a...

Time to say Good Bye to Prithvi Missiles?
By: Prakash Nanda | Issue: Courtesy: Uday India | Date: 21 Sep , 2012
Recently I attended a round-table symposium on how “Missile transparency” could be an important confidence building measure (CBM) between India and Pakistan. It was organised by the New...

China humiliates India by offering cash tips
By: Prakash Nanda | Issue: Courtesy: Uday India | Date: 06 Sep , 2012
How does one view the tips (“gift”) of Rs. 50000 that General Liang Guanglie, the outgoing defence minister of China, who has just concluded his five-day India visit, gave each of the two...

Arab Spring: Is India being blackmailed?
By: Prakash Nanda | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 03 Aug , 2012
As an old student of Indian foreign policy, I have always viewed “nonalignment” as a tool of pursuing India’s national interests. Nonalignment can never be a goal, which, unfortunately, many...

Turmoil in Bodoland
By: Prakash Nanda | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 26 Jul , 2012
Assam is burning as I write this. Ethnic clashes between the Bodo tribes (Hindus) and “Bengali Muslims” (most of them being immigrants) have already consumed 40 lives and resulted in...

Sri Lanka: Disturbing Questions
By: Prakash Nanda | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 13 Jul , 2012
Some years ago, I was in Sri Lankan capital Colombo. On learning that my home state happens to be Odisha despite my Delhi-upbringing, all of a sudden, the general manager of the hotel where I was...

An Inept Job in Kashmir
By: Prakash Nanda | Issue: Courtesy: Uday India | Date: 19 Jun , 2012
The much-awaited report of the Kashmir-interlocutors, appointed by the Union Home Ministry, is now out in the public domain. 176-page long, it has evoked mixed reactions. The interlocutors have...

Silent Invasion
By: Prakash Nanda | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 03 May , 2012
In its latest “Annual Report”, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has admitted that checking illegal migration from Bangladesh is a major challenge “considering the porous nature of the...

India's Tibet?
By: Prakash Nanda | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 21 Apr , 2012
The act of self-immolation by the Tibetan protestor Jamphel Yeshi on March 26 in New Delhi against the visit of the Chinese President Hu Jintao has hit the international headlines. In contrast,...

Indo-Pak: Limitations of Peace Talks
By: Prakash Nanda | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 17 Nov , 2011
One always has a lot of emotional attachment with his or her place of birth. Therefore it is understandable why Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has a very soft corner for Pakistan. He once had...

Three cheers for AFSPA
By: Prakash Nanda | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 09 Nov , 2011
By no stretch of imagination, Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah can be considered a competent administrator. His record in office has been pathetic, to say the least. Yet, he does...

The Hina factor
By: Prakash Nanda | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 28 Jul , 2011
External Affairs Minister S M Krishna says that he is “satisfied” at the progress achieved during the India-Pakistan dialogue on July 27 at New Delhi. According to him, his talks with the...

Laden and Ladenism
By: Prakash Nanda | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 05 May , 2011
Osama Bin Laden has been killed by the Americans, though many Pakistanis and Arabs do not believe so in the absence of such “hard evidence” as displaying his dead body or the burying ritual....

Misreading Pakistan
By: Prakash Nanda | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 15 Apr , 2011
The recently revealed WikiLeaks documents mentioned, among others, how the then national security advisor M K Narayanan had indicated once to his American interlocutors, and that too, in the...

Hostages on Sea
By: Prakash Nanda | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 11 Mar , 2011
As I write this, family members and supporters of the six Indian sailors onboard MV Suez, an Egyptian ship, captured by Somali pirates in August 2010, remains uncertain. With the deadline to pay...

Dark Clouds over Pakistan
By: Prakash Nanda | Issue: Net Edition | Date: 03 Mar , 2011
It all began in June 2009. Asia Bibi, a farm hand from the village of Ittan Wali in Sheikhupura District of the Punjab province in Pakistan, was asked to fetch water. Bibi, whose is the only...

The Fragile Af-Pak Policy
By: Prakash Nanda | Issue: Vol 24.4 Oct-Dec 2009 | Date: 07 Feb , 2011
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,...