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India’s AI conundrum

Late last month, people across the globe gathered online for the second Annual Artificial Intelligence for Information Accessibility Conference (AI4IA), organised by UNESCO. Fittingly for an AI conference, it was hosted on the Gather.Town platform, which allows for virtual customisable spaces to be

By Aarti Betigeri

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Could India join the Five Eyes?

As the United States grapples with China, Washington is seeking to build a tight-knit security network in the Indo-Pacific. Among those measures is a possible expansion of the Five Eyes, as the intelligence sharing arrangement between Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United

By Mohamed Zeeshan

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Australia-India trade deal: An early harvest or cherry picking?

There is a new mood of optimism around the most recent effort to revive the Australia-India Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA) being spearheaded by Australian Trade, Tourism and Investment Minister Dan Tehan and his Indian counterpart, Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal.

By Justin Brown

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Economic diplomacy: After Kabul, Australia looks to India

Suitcase intelligence Bob Carr recalls in his Diary of a Foreign Minister how a senior Australian intelligence official told him bluntly in 2013 that the war against the Taliban was failing. “We spent a billion dollars in Uruzgan province … We could have achieved the same result if I had been

By Greg Earl

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India fears a poison harvest from Afghanistan

The takeover of the Afghan government by the hard-line Islamist Taliban was swift and bloodless – at least on the day the group marched into the capital, Kabul. It means a u-turn for the country domestically, away from progressive policies and relatively liberal climate, and a return to the

By Aarti Betigeri

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Afghanistan’s collapse shifts strategic dynamics in South Asia

What was predicted to take 90 days instead occurred within weeks – a complete takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban after a hasty withdrawal of US troops, with Kabul succumbing without a struggle. But mayhem, chaos and uncertainty was not unexpected. Concerned voices had raised the alarm

By Stuti Bhatnagar

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Australia and India: A time to refocus on trade talks

Australia’s former Prime Minister Tony Abbott has just completed a packed visit to India from 2–6 August as Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s special trade envoy. Abbott should have reason to be encouraged by his interactions and his meetings with a cross section of decision-makers in India,

By Anil Wadhwa

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India-US ties: Work in progress

Diplomatese papered over the political turbulence in India during US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s two-day official visit to the country on 27 and 28 July. Narendra Modi’s government has been stigmatised not only by the Indian public and the opposition parties for its excesses against

By Sarosh Bana

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India: A very colonial hangover

In the 1830’s Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay set about drafting a piece of legislation that would outlive not just him but also the empire that gave him the license to do so. Indeed, it’s a cruel irony that Macaulay’s world view, long discredited in the former colony, has found an almost

By Edmond Roy

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Another proxy war in Afghanistan?

With the US in the process of withdrawing the last of its troops from Afghanistan, it has taken little time for fierce fighting to flare up in several parts of the country, as the Taliban seeks to wrest control from the elected government. Already, it has overrun large swathes of territory and is

By Aarti Betigeri

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Central Vista Project: Raining on Modi’s parade

The face of New Delhi’s political heart, Lutyens Delhi (named after the British architect Edwin Lutyens who designed it) is a place of broad boulevards, imposing red sandstone buildings, flowing fountains and wide swathes of green space. Built between 1911 and 1931, the area was intended to be the

By Aarti Betigeri

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The dangers in Australia’s blissful ignorance about India

A major headline from the 2021 Lowy Institute Poll is the dramatic decline in the Australian public’s assessment of China, continuing the trend already observed in previous years. While 52% of respondents said they trusted China to “act responsibly in the world” either “a great deal” or

By Lavina Lee

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India’s hidden Covid crisis

India’s second wave of Covid-19 has been brutal on its people. During the first wave, images emerged of a mass exodus from the major cities with countless people walking – sometimes more than 700 kilometres – back to their villages, many not surviving the journey. Now it is happening again.

By Vani Swarupa Murali

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China’s never-ending Tibet paranoia

Beijing has long been anxious about the popularity of the Dalai Lama, and Tibet remains a principal source of international vulnerability for the Peoples Republic of China. After the Dalai Lama relinquished political responsibilities in 2011, the position of Sikyong, considered president of the

By Rahul Mishra

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Indians are becoming visible in Australia like never before

Two weeks after the end of the hiatus on flights from India to Australia, the repatriation of the 9,000-plus Australian citizens who wish to return home has resumed, albeit slowly. But the repercussions are immense: at least two Australian citizens died from Covid-19 in India in recent weeks, and

By Aarti Betigeri

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India’s Covid-19 wave is spreading south

Images of the pandemic in Delhi that currently saturate the international media depict ailing patients struggling to find beds, oxygen and medical attention. Amid a highly privatised healthcare terrain with underfunded public hospitals, access to Delhi’s hospitals has long depended on one’s own&

By Lesley Branagan

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Authoritarians seek advantage in India’s Covid crisis

As India grapples with an apocalyptic Covid-19 crisis at home, the Modi government put a temporary halt on its “Vaccine Maitri” (vaccine friendship) program shipping millions of vaccine doses abroad. India had set itself an ambition to become a regional and, indeed, a global

By Mubashar Hasan

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India’s power illusion

India was proud to boast about being the “world’s pharmacy” as the coronavirus pandemic unfolded, particularly after other members in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue asked India to mass-produce Covid-19 vaccines for export across the world. Indeed, high-minded government decrees about

By Anita Inder Singh

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India: Smoke and mirrors

Watching a Hindu cremation, in which the body is burned on an open funeral pyre, is a profoundly confronting experience. The body is placed onto a cement platform. A pyre is built around it, with wood stacked in a triangular tunnel to allow the fire to breathe. Ghee is scattered around the

By Aarti Betigeri

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Taiwan: Renewing a southbound vision

For all the talk of cross-Strait military tensions – which are real – in the economic realm, Taiwan’s fortunes have been bound to those of China. Recognising the need to diversify, when Tsai Ing-wen was elected in 2016, she initiated what was dubbed a “New Southbound Policy”, with the

By Kannan R. Nair

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Bhutan: Happy days for the jab in between a strategic pinch

Bhutan, the tiny kingdom situated high in the Himalayas between India and China, has emerged as an unlikely Covid-19 vaccination success story. In the fortnight between late March and mid-April, its government vaccinated 93% of its adult population, or 63% of its population of just over 750,000. By

By Aarti Betigeri

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India’s failure to include enough women in politics

Indian politician Lathika Subhash smiled for the cameras last month and then shaved the hair from her head. Subhash was making a personal protest after being left off Congress party ticket for state elections in the southern state of Kerala. But her intent was not only to draw attention to her own

By Rajesh Trichur Venkiteswaran

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Russia’s Asia diplomacy

Russia’s long-serving Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov shuttled between Beijing, New Delhi and Islamabad in recent weeks, putting on a diplomatic display that could be described as admirably adroit as much as it was divisive. From China and India, Lavrov fulminated against a hostile America’s

By Anita Inder Singh

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The Quad (finally) delivers: Can it be sustained?

On 19 March, the leaders of four important democracies of the Indo-Pacific region – the United States, Japan, Australia and India – held (virtually) their first-ever “Quad Summit.” This meeting at the leaders’ level of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue was significant on two counts. It

By Susan Thornton

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Economic diplomacy: Global tax, education exports and Team Australia

Tax and spend US President Joe Biden may be grabbing the global headlines by boosting world growth with his big spending and international security with his telephone diplomacy. But US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen seems to be doing the real heavy lifting in restoring American credibility in

By Greg Earl

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Unresolved questions in US-India relations

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s recent visit to New Delhi was a chance for the United States and India to discuss the nature and depth of their strategic partnership – particularly against the backdrop of tensions with an aggressive China. Austin visited New Delhi soon after leaders

By Anita Inder Singh

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In India, a taste of political variety

With five state elections to be contested in coming weeks, India is heading back into election mode: alcohol shops are being shuttered, petrol prices have been cut to appease voters, and top leaders of both the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the main opposition party Congress have been

By Aarti Betigeri

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Aggressive sea control isn’t an option for India’s navy

An interesting debate has emerged in the pages of The Interpreter involving maritime strategy. Arzan Tarapore wrote an article last month arguing that India should prioritise a sea denial strategy in the Indian Ocean aimed at “reinforcing defensive bulwarks “ that could dissuade China from “

By Abhijit Singh

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The Quad gives a boost to India’s vaccine diplomacy

The most notable takeaway from the first-ever “Quad” leaders meeting involving the US, India, Japan and Australia at the weekend was the agreement on expanding the global vaccine supply. The vaccination capacity of India will be increased to produce 1 billion doses by 2022, the leaders announced

By Teesta Prakash

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A new “concert” to govern the Indo-Pacific

The joint statement issued following the weekend meeting of the four “Quad” leaders was titled “The Spirit of the Quad”. This title could be read as either self-affirmation or self-praise. The Quad’s first summit of leaders was a somewhat informal affair, held virtually amid a global

By Pang Zhongying

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Sea denial is not enough: An Australian and Indian perspective

In recent years – and for good reason - the strategic commentariat in both Australia and India has become increasingly concerned with the rise of China’s maritime power and the potential threat that this development poses for both nations. How each nation should respond is a difficult problem,

By James Goldrick, Sudarshan Y. Shrikhande

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Cracks beginning to appear in the Russia-India relationship

India’s annual summit with Russia was cancelled last year for the first time since its inception – the official reason, as was commonly blamed for many abandoned events, Covid-19. The summit’s cancellation was a rare hiccup in what has otherwise been a traditionally close partnership. Moscow

By Henry Storey

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Agalega: A glimpse of India’s remote island military base

The small, remote Mauritian island of North Agalega, located in the south-western Indian Ocean, 1,122 kilometres north of Mauritius, is currently a hive of construction activity. India sought access to the islands in 2015 to develop as an air and naval staging point for surveillance of the south-

By Samuel Bashfield

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India must be realistic about Russia relations

The visit to Moscow by India’s Foreign Secretary Harsh Shringla on 17–18 February was his first overseas trip outside South Asia during the corona crisis, underscoring the importance India attaches to its strategic partnership with Russia. But it is a relationship where New Delhi must also be

By Anita Inder Singh

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India’s Koo plots a digital coup

Facebook might be a social media behemoth, its reach and power made apparent when Australian users saw local news rubbed off their screens from Thursday in response to new media laws, but the platform is also just one among an ever-growing online milieu. China has WeChat, the world has Twitter, and

By Aarti Betigeri

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India, Canada and the new vaccine politics

The threat of wealthy countries hoarding vaccines for themselves and denying access to smaller and poorer countries has become the world’s primary cooperative concern. Yet how vaccine nationalism also attaches itself to pre-existing relationships between countries may become another part of this

By Grant Wyeth

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Crushing dissent in a new paranoid India

The signs were always there. With a thumping majority in parliament, a nonexistent opposition and diminishing institutions, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government had the potential to proceed down the dangerous and desperate path of intolerance. Two months of sustained pressure from a

By Edmond Roy

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India and Australia: Beyond the three Cs

India often breezes through the window of Australia’s national consciousness, but rarely lingers. Will India once again disappear from our collective awareness, following a short summer in which we were captivated by a sublime test series in Australia? Cricket has been a common denominator

By Andrew Hunter

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India should prioritise a denial strategy in the Indian Ocean

To break the border stand-off between India and China in the Himalayas, some Indian analysts have advocated going on the offensive against China in the Indian Ocean. But that would be vague, illogical and imprudent, with little chance of success and significant risk of blowback. Instead, India and

By Arzan Tarapore

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The Irrepressibles tame the Invincibles in their impregnable fortress

Bliss it was to be a cricket aficionado in Australia at dusk yesterday as the shadows lengthened at the Gabba and the players were bathed in soft golden sunlight. To be an Indian fan was pure heaven. We are resigned to heartaches as a staple diet. But once in a while, the gods smile, all is good in

By Ramesh Thakur

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Australia’s Pacific Step-up and the Quad

The growing synergy among the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue powers of Australia, Japan, the United States and India has provided a crucial impetus to the security architecture of the Indo-Pacific. Bilateral ties between these four states have also seen positive growth, largely a result of “like-

By Eerishika Pankaj

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India launches its mammoth vaccine drive

India officially launches its Covid vaccination program tomorrow (16 January) in a major logistical exercise aiming to inoculate hundreds of millions of people. And with it, the hustle begins. India, just like China, will be looking to leverage the diplomatic benefit of its ability to manufacture

By Aarti Betigeri

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Can Modi calm the farm?

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has always been coated in Teflon: the kinds of policies and actions that would have brought down other leaders have barely left a dent in his impeccably tailored vests. But as it turns out, there is a chink in his armour: farmers. Specifically, 250 million of

By Aarti Betigeri

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India’s farmers take on Modi

In one of the coldest winters in recent memory, and in the midst of a global pandemic, farmers from Punjab and Haryana, in their thousands, have laid siege to the Indian capital, New Delhi. Braving cold winds, water cannons, baton charges, tear gas, barbed wire and the heavy-handed might of the

By Edmond Roy

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India heads towards economic autarky

India’s Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar this week made the clearest statement yet that India intends to head back down the road of economic autarky – for strategic reasons. This would represent a U-turn on almost 30 years of trade liberalisation, with profound effects for India’s role

By David Brewster

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Putting the caste system in its place

Watchers of the Netflix show Indian Matchmaking might have missed it, but for Indian viewers attuned to what goes unsaid between the lines, there was a subtext to the program that has turned out to be incredibly portentous: caste. In the wake of the Netflix docuseries – alongside

By Aarti Betigeri

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India: Trolls from a Hindu nationalist fringe with a majority complex

A recent television commercial aired in India by jewellery brand Tanishq triggered an explosion of outrage among right-wing Hindu nationalist supporters in India, raising concerns about a growing religious polarisation in the country. The ad, meant to promote a new collection called “

By Roshni Kapur, Nazneen Mohsina

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Rebirth of the quadrilateral Malabar: Promises and portents for India

Lying at the south-eastern extremity of the Indian peninsula, the Malabar is a serene, idyllic region at the confluence of the Arabian Sea, the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean. This region was once the historical gateway for maritime trade between India and the rest of the world, until the

By Prakash Gopal

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A real-life Bollywood soap opera, with a political twist

When things get grim in India, the usual way of dealing with it is to look towards Bollywood for some distracting relief. This time, however, it’s not the latest musical providing distraction, but rather the imbroglio over the suicide of a popular movie actor, which was blamed on his girlfriend

By Aarti Betigeri

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India-Australia security relations: They’ve only just begun

The Quad – the grouping comprised of Australia, India, Japan, and the United States – held its first stand-alone foreign ministerial meeting this month in Tokyo. In the words of one Australian analyst, the grouping that once faltered and restarted with a crawl now finally stands on its two feet

By Dhruva Jaishankar

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