Posted By
Indrani Bagchi
01 July 2010, 08:44 PM IST
During the BRIC summit in Brasilia earlier this year, Dai Bingguo, state councilor, pulled NSA Shivshankar Menon aside to say China wanted to hold a separate dialogue with India on Afghanistan.
It set off a “think” within the Indian leadership about...
Posted By
Indrani Bagchi
14 March 2010, 09:14 PM IST
Apologies for being away for so long. But what brought me back was revelation of nothing less than a tectonic shift in India’s Pakistan policy. It appears we have finally cracked the code on how to completely cripple Pakistan.
According to this ...
Posted By
Indrani Bagchi
01 November 2009, 01:04 AM IST
India has taken its growing concerns of trade imbalances to China’s doorstep. In regular circumstances, this would have passed unnoticed, buried among other business news. But in the India-China context, trade is a strategic asset, as important as the boundary...
Posted By
Indrani Bagchi
22 October 2009, 07:40 PM IST
Lets not underestimate the significance of the Jundullah attack on the elite Iranian Revolutionary Guards on October 18. The audacious attack killed 42 people, including senior commanders from the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), Nour-Ali Shoushtari and...
Posted By
Indrani Bagchi
19 August 2009, 07:58 PM IST
How much will the US give out to keep Pakistan president Asif Ali Zardari at his job? Zardari is hoping some big ticket military equipment might do the trick. This will keep the army happy and supportive and his opponents at bay.
India has alerted the US...
Posted By
Indrani Bagchi
07 August 2009, 08:06 PM IST
The killing of Pakistan Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud by a US drone is the first piece of good news that Pakistan can celebrate, certainly since its been near impossible to capture or kill any high-value terrorist. Mehsud was the biggest obstacle to...
Posted By
Indrani Bagchi
02 August 2009, 02:42 PM IST
Nirupama Rao takes over as foreign secretary at a very interesting time in the life of the MEA.
In a way, it must be a sense of déjà vu. In 2001, Rao took over the very important job of the joint secretary (XP) / spokesperson bang in the middle of the...
Posted By
Indrani Bagchi
04 July 2009, 07:54 PM IST
NEW DELHI: Yukiya Amano, veteran Japanese diplomat, was elected new director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in a closely contested election this week. Widely seen as a candidate for the developed world, Amano’s election would have...
Posted By
Indrani Bagchi
30 June 2009, 01:38 AM IST
A change of guard is due in the MEA. India’s ambassador to China, Nirupama Rao, looks set to take over from Shiv Shankar Menon as foreign secretary, come August. Her appointment has been widely speculated so its really not a huge surprise. There has been no...
Posted By
Indrani Bagchi
28 June 2009, 12:39 PM IST
That is the message from the Indian government to its military brass after a series of comments that has driven the civilian government up the wall. After a series of sharp rebukes, notice the peaceable tone of the army chief Gen Deepak Kapoor when he said on...
Posted By
Indrani Bagchi
22 June 2009, 09:27 PM IST
A week ago, a visit by Pervez Musharraf, former Pakistan president, to Russia alerted Indian authorities. The visit was facilitated by a private businessman, but India realized quite soon that Musharraf was doing some facilitation of his own, preparing...
Posted By
Indrani Bagchi
18 June 2009, 06:11 PM IST
China is well and truly mad at us. The latest provocation was a diplomatic coup that India pulled on China, getting the US, Japan and even Pakistan to vote for ADB funding for a $2.9 billion Indian development project, which includes a $60 million watershed...
Posted By
Indrani Bagchi
15 June 2009, 07:02 PM IST
If one part of the Obama administration has woolly headed ideas about Kashmir, at least another part of the administration is much more clear-headed. Bruce Riedel, a veteran CIA official and one with indepth knowledge of South Asia, spent quality time recently...
Posted By
Indrani Bagchi
12 June 2009, 01:07 PM IST
The US surge in Afghanistan will turn up the heat on Karachi. Khalid Aziz, chairman of the Peshawar-based thinktank Regional Institute of Policy Research and Training, predicts that the start of the US-led onslaught in southern Afghanistan will have...
Posted By
Indrani Bagchi
06 June 2009, 06:47 PM IST
India took its trade diplomacy up several notches this week with negotiators wrapping up a free trade deal in goods with other BIMSTEC countries i.e. Thailand, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and Nepal. Officials from all the countries met in Thai...
Indrani Bagchi is The Times of India's diplomatic editor. She calls this blog a wide canvas through which she looks at the world and how India responds to it.
The views expressed in Globespotting are the author´s own.
