Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla on Tuesday said that India has not only mainstreamed Indo-Pacific, but also encouraged others to perceive and define
January 12, 2021
Amid the ongoing intra-Afghan peace talks in Doha, will India assist Afghanistan militarily? According to a report in ThePrint, New Delhi has assured Kabul of military assistance as the US is busy withdrawing troops from the war-ravaged country.
The Pentagon had said in November 2020 that it would reduce the number of US forces in Afghanistan from 4,500 to 2,500 by mid-January. The US military has not halted the troop withdrawal process despite a new law banning the same without prior knowledge of the US Congress. A defense official told Reuters the US troop level already is close to 3,000.
Last week, India’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar and Afghanistan Foreign Minister Mohammed Haneef Atmar had talked over a phone call to discuss the Afghan peace process among other issues such as Covid-19.
URL copied
Zoya Akhtar
In a session jointly organised by the Population Foundation of India and Jaipur Literature Festival, director and producer Zoya Akhtar, in conversation with author Mihir Sharma,discussed the dangers of online abuse and bullying. The session titled, Cyber Bullies: Anonymity and Accountability , was streamed on YouTube and Facebook. The conversation between acclaimed director Zoya Akhtar and Mihir Sharma, a Senior Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, underscored the dangers of cyberbullying.
Sharma is the author of Restart: The Last Chance for the Indian Economy and the co-editor of What the Economy Needs Now while Zoya s company Tiger Baby Films has produced the superhit web series Made in Heaven in 2019.
Shakti Sinha | | Published 17.01.21, 10:32 PM
The author was former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s Man Friday, the bureaucrat beside him through thick and thin and all the highs and lows. He was on the bus during the heady trip to Lahore and at his side when Vajpayee travelled to Kargil to buck up the troops even as the guns were still firing at will. Sinha was also with him in the car as Vajpayee rode from the swearing in ceremony to the prime minister’s office and remarks: “Little did I realise that over the next year-and-a-half, I would accompany Vajpayee on all car journeys, except when ill or really tired.” In his book, Vajpayee: The Years that Changed India , Sinha describes the hectic behind-the-scenes action when the Kargil War broke out and how India initially didn’t realise what a serious situation it had on its hands. An excerpt:
January 16, 2021 – 7:12 am
Well, it was either blaming attacks (which have always happened. Indians have known of this long enough to wear mask on the backs of their heads, so tigers think someone is looking at them) on ‘climate change’, the patriarchy, or white supremacy, which seem to be the usual wells news outlets like Reuters go to
On a warm November afternoon, Parul Haldar balanced precariously on the bow of a small wooden dinghy, pulling in a long net flecked with fish from the swirling brown river.
Just behind her loomed the dense forest of the Sundarbans, where some 10,000 square km of tidal mangroves straddle India’s northeastern coastline and western Bangladesh and open into the Bay of Bengal.