History has seen the evolution of society from individual hunters, groups, communities, and to the ‘God’ oriented religions. At last, the modern era witnessed societies oriented to humanist philosophy. Every node at which a significant change took place has a technological advancement. Stone made tools, fire, the wheel, agriculture, and metals led to the formation of settled communities and then came the sophisticated inventions like catapults, chariots, leading to the establishments of kingdoms and empires.

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The Covid-19 pandemic provided an opportunity for China to overtake the US in comprehensive global power, given that Xi Jinping has managed the aftermath of the pandemic much better than the leaders of the major countries of North America, Europe and Asia.

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Formal dialogue with the ULFA (Pro-Talk)—which began in 2011 (but had stalled)—is reportedly going to kick start after the elections of 2021. By all accounts, the last round of talks ended on a positive note with the organisation expressing its satisfaction about the initiatives, which New Delhi had taken. According to an earlier press statement by the organisation, the “discussion is (presently) at a crucial stage and ULFA (Pro-Talk) expects a Memorandum of Settlement to be signed ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha Election”.

The COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc on every aspect of life, including education, in an unexpected and long-lasting way. To keep our economies from coming to a halt, governments are maximizing online employment practices and improving e-health and e-learning capabilities. Academic institutions all over the globe have embraced online education as a way to make up for the significant drop in training hours. Professional and skilled workers in the economy have easily and effectively moved to online work mode.

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Around 200 PRC ‘fishing boats’ have entered Philippines waters and despite love calls from Duterte to his counterpart in Beijing, refuse to leave.

Owing to a longstanding territorial dispute over the Kuril Islands (also known as northern territories) Russia and Japan, haven't established a peace treaty 75 years after WWII. The return of the islands had been historically important to Japanese leaders. The new Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga acknowledged the dispute in his first speech in the Parliament.

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Almost a decade ago, on 10 June 2011, a Tier One United States’ Naval Special Warfare Development Group, namely DEVGRU or Seal Team Six assassinated Osama Bin Laden in the heart of Pakistan. At the time, counter terrorism apparatus around the world had geared up for what most analysts had prophesised would be Islamist reprisals for the Abbotabad incident.

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In November 2014, this author was a member of the Indian delegation for a Track II Dialogue with Myanmar. The delegation had among others, a very senior former diplomat who had headed a particular prime minister’s Policy Planning Committee in 1984 and a former Army Commander. The author had earlier represented India in Track II Dialogues with Bangladesh and China, but a curious sense of atavism had gripped his innards when he was asked to be part of the Indian delegation to Yangon.

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Nehru believed that he was neither ambivalent nor ambiguous, but on the side of ‘non-alignment’, whatever that was intended by him to be in practice.

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The issue of China’s bizarre visa policy towards a section of India’s citizenry had come to the fore almost a decade ago when two sportsmen from Arunachal Pradesh were prevented by Indian immigration authorities from boarding a flight from New Delhi to Beijing in order to attend the Weightlifting Grand Prix that was to be held in China’s Fujian province on 15-17 January 2011. The reason for the prevention—in consonance with the considered Indian stand—was that the sportsmen had stapled Chinese visas on their passports.