Articles

August 22, 2022

The Failed Ideas of Waste to Energy Plants in India

Worldwide spurious debate on climate change issues and the rising temperatures, global cooling, pollution, contaminations of land, air, water, waterbodies, a decrease in the groundwater table, and hazardous chemicals became irreversible forces in the era of the globalised world.  The […]
July 25, 2022

Kerala draft rules on labour codes: Does it liberalise women’s economic opportunities?

Over the past several years, the female labour force participation in Kerala has improved but it still lags behind compared to men’s participation in the labour force. According to the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) data in 2018-19, the labour […]
July 23, 2022

Equidistant Diplomacy Drives Vietnam’s Foreign Policy

The US-China competition is getting more acrimonious and the Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Yi may have put the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) nations on call. In his address at the ASEAN secretariat in Jakarta, Indonesia, Yi cautioned the […]
July 22, 2022

Evolving Landscape of Regulatory Overlaps in Ed-tech

by Kalyani Balagopal and Nissy Solomon The last two years have shown us that education can transcend from its traditionally slow-moving structure to a dynamic hybrid system. If there’s anything the pandemic has been able to teach us, it’s that […]
July 21, 2022

Lulu Mall Midnight Sale | Kerala’s consumerist culture is speaking. Is the State listening?

Though the amendments in the Kerala Shops & Establishment Act permit 24X7 shopping, the ecosystem has not evolved due to the lack of transport options and support from the State. Here, the market is trying to find its own feet […]
July 9, 2022

Vietnam Modernizes Maritime Militia

Aggressive posturing by the Chinese maritime militia and their proclivity to engage in gray zone operations has triggered a chain of reactions and responses by the South China Sea claimant States. One such manifestation is the Vietnamese investments in modernisation […]
July 9, 2022

Abe is gone, but his legacy will live on

The longest serving head of the state, Shinzo Abe had made an immemorial mark on Japan’s foreign policy and economic strategy popularly known as “Abenomics”. The 67-year old led his party Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to victory twice in the […]
July 8, 2022

Beyond the sustainability angle: The strategic acumen of India’s Arctic Policy

The New Arctic Policy released in March 2022 is undoubtedly a landmark as far as India-Nordic and Indo-Russia relations are concerned. “India and the Arctic: Building a Partnership for Sustainable Development” is a policy which primarily addresses strengthening India’s scientific […]
July 1, 2022

Poor Ranking of India in the Environmental Performance Index-2022

At the beginning of this century, the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) gave new imputes to the developing economies for achieving the basic standard of living for all. Across the economies, and particularly in India, the end outcomes accrued at the […]
June 30, 2022

India and Vietnam strengthen defence cooperation

Three significant developments concerning India-Vietnam defence cooperation merit attention.  First, earlier this month, India formally handed over six high-speed boats built for the Vietnamese Border Guard Force. These boats are part of the 12 boats that were offered by India […]
June 27, 2022

Khadi artisans’ struggle for economic emancipation

Khadi, as Gandhi envisioned, promotes the philosophy of self-reliance and indigeneity. A fundamental feature of khadi production entailed a constructive development of rural sections via collective action- characterised by local sourcing, local production and selling. Today there is a marked […]
June 20, 2022

Outsourcing of security in the Solomon Islands: A historical  perspective

Among the many geopolitical issues that were transformed or exacerbated in different parts of the world by the COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing uncertainty, the current events in the South Pacific merits mention. Crises of multiple dimensions have been brewing […]
May 27, 2022

Manila’s Foreign Policy Commitments in the South China Sea Under the New President-elect

The recent Presidential elections in the Philippines presented an interesting case for evaluating the geopolitics prospects in Southeast Asia and beyond. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. won a landslide victory, the kind that his father Ferdinand Marcos Sr. had achieved decades […]
May 11, 2022

Do governance dashboards actually provide any insights?

Dashboards need to carefully select key indicators and ensure that the quality of the data used is high. Otherwise, they will remain as a visualisation exercise and not be able to provide insights expected from them The recent controversy about […]
May 11, 2022

ASEAN leaders are all set for Summit in the US

In a few days from now, President Biden will host the ASEAN leaders in Washington for the ASEAN-US Summit to celebrate 45 years of their ties. The rescheduled Summit (earlier planned for March 28 and 29) is a significant demonstration […]