Rajiv sikri book pdf

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Do not trade my personal information. At the same time, the cooperation of these small, seemingly insignificant States is crucial to tackle new global threats like terrorism, arms smuggling and drug trafficking, as well as key issues of human survival such as water, energy, food and climate change over which war could break out among nations. A stable new world order will have to squarely deal with these contradictions.

US Power Plateau Uncertainties remain about the relative global weight of the major powers in the coming decades. Influential writers and thinkers in the US are conscious of the global power shift taking place. The ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, where the US has been unable to prevail despite its massive use of military power, bring out the limits of US military power. American political influence around the world is also on the decline.

Russia is once again successfully challenging the aggressive US forays into its strategic neighbourhood. The situation is no better on the economic side. But the rise of Asian economies has reduced the share of the US in global economic output.

The rising clout of sovereign wealth funds in the hands of the central banks of geopolitical rivals like China and Russia and plentiful petrodollars in the hands of Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries OPEC members is an undeniable reality that cannot be wished away. The sudden collapse of many venerable Wall Street banks and financial institutions has dramatically underscored how the long dominant economic position of the US is under serious threat.

Even though the US still arouses more admiration as well as envy than any other country, global awareness about environmental challenges and climate change have made growing numbers of people realize that the US lifestyle is both unattainable and unsustainable. Instead of being regarded as a welcoming beacon of hope, refuge, freedom and prosperity, the US is viewed as an armed fortress that seeks to protect an insecure and self-absorbed society.

Bereft of the ideological cloak of the Cold War, the legitimacy of US hegemonic policies has eroded. Its platitudinous concern for democracy and human rights is regarded with suspicion and mistrust by millions around the world. From the perspective of its own national interests, the US is understandably searching for a strategy that would preserve its unquestioned primacy in the world.

It is looking for ways to counter these disturbing trends that credibly threaten to dislodge it from its lofty and safe perch, and to hedge against looming uncertainties. Although most Americans would recoil with horror at the thought, the US is an empire albeit a declining one. As with most empires, the decline is likely to be long, bloody and messy.

We are witnessing the end of an era. China Rising? Will China dominate the 21st century world? China is growing impressively and seemingly inexorably, but its economic miracle could soon run out of steam. Its model of economic development requires an ever-expanding availability of raw materials and commodities that cannot be taken for granted. Global resources are likely to run out sooner rather than later.

This makes for an inherently unstable political system. No country as large as China has been able to combine a consistently high economic growth over a long period with an authoritarian political system. If, despite the odds, China proves the sceptics wrong, this would create headaches for many countries, including India.

Political change in China over the last century has come through violent means. In the absence of a reliable mechanism to transfer political power from the Communist Party of China to a more broad-based coalition of interest groups, the danger of destabilizing political violence cannot be brushed aside. China pulled out all the stops so that no annoying steam or heat should sweat the brow nor any shrill whistle jar the ear as China held its coming-out Olympics party in the hushed elegance of a spruced-up Beijing.

The unwashed and unemployed hoi polloi were magically swept away from the heart of Beijing and other cities to forgotten corners of China. The trouble is that parties are not eternal, and the patience of suffering people not infinite.

Although China has for the moment managed to put down the upheavals in Tibet that flared up in March , the Tibet story is not over. Troubles could break out again. It is noteworthy that the disaffection of the Tibetans extended deep into the interior of Tibet. This cannot but worry the Chinese authorities. The biggest potential threat to China may not be from Taiwan but from Tibet and Xinjiang. Taiwan is a dispute in the Han Chinese family; Tibet and Xinjiang are non-Han areas of the Chinese empire whose people have been brutally suppressed but refuse to be cowed down.

In the 20th century between the fall of the Manchu dynasty in and the Communist takeover of China in , both Tibet and Xinjiang functioned as de facto independent States, which were recognized as such by other States. The unpleasant reality about China is that it is an imperial power. Like other empires, China too will find it nigh impossible over the long term to hold on to its conquered domains, the sprawling buffer zones of Xinjiang, Tibet, Manchuria and Inner Mongolia, unless all its citizens—Han and non-Han—feel that they are equal stakeholders, not rulers and subjects.

From being the co- equal of the US in its incarnation as the Soviet Union, Russia was contemptuously, if mistakenly, relegated by the West to strategic irrelevance in the post-Cold War era. Under President Putin, Russia got back on its feet, reasserted the power of the State and regained its badly dented self-confidence.

High oil prices have put Russia on the high road of economic recovery and growth. With its debts repaid and huge foreign exchange reserves in its kitty, Russia today is in a combative and chauvinistic mood.

Russia remains a technology leader in many critical areas, and will do its utmost to ensure that it retains the unique capacity to be able to threaten the physical destruction of the US—the principal remaining reason why the US continues to take Russia seriously. Although Russia has regained its appetite to be an assertive global player, especially as an energy superpower, it faces formidable challenges, including a declining population, threats to its internal cohesion and stability, and a still somewhat immature political system.

Rise of Asia The fulcrum of global politics and economics is inexorably shifting towards Asia. What K. Sometimes a question is raised whether, seeing that many regions in Asia have little in common with one another, there is really a single Asia. Such assertions beg the question, namely if there can be a Europe based on a civilizational unity despite a centuries-old tradition of rivalry and conflict, how can one deny that Asia represents a distinct civilization?

Just as the European civilization is based on Graeco-Roman traditions, religions like Christianity and Judaism and values like democracy and the rights of the individual, so do Asian societies have common roots in the spiritual and philosophic traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Confucianism that stress collective social harmony and obligations over individual rights.

What about Islam? The Arab world straddles Europe and Asia, its religious moorings deriving from the same traditions as other religions of the book, its social mores more akin to those of other Asian countries. Of course, this is not to minimize other differences among Asians, nor to suggest that Asia can become a European Union clone. Whither India? The global standing of India in the 21st century will depend to a large extent on whether India lives up to its promise and potential, whether China manages to sustain its economic growth, and the inter-relationship between the two giants.

Its traditional policy of dominating the Gulf unchanged, the US remains firmly entrenched at multiple locations on land and sea in this region. The US presence here has stabilized regimes, but not countries. The already complex traditional geo-politics of this region, marked by myriad inter-State disputes and instability, have been immensely further complicated by energy geo-politics and created enormous tensions and potential deadly conflicts.

With the interests of so many powers at stake, it is little wonder that the area of the northern Indian Ocean, the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf, and adjoining landlocked Central Asia, has become the most militarized region in the world, much like Europe was during the Cold War era. India, which has given the Indian Ocean its name, is at the heart of Asia, with links to all the sub-regions of Asia. Its geographical location puts India at the vortex of these four arcs that carry both potential and peril.

Predictions are fraught with uncertainty. Even the US, for all its power, is uncertain about the future. A single unexpected event, or a development in a seemingly unimportant part of the world could trigger off a chain reaction that draws in the great powers and leads to unforeseen consequences.

One cannot be sure of the long-term consequences of the ongoing Iraq war or the unilateral declaration of independence of Kosovo. Will Israel or the US attack Iran? How will North Korea stabilize? Will Afghanistan go back to its Taliban past? Whither Pakistan? What of natural disasters and epidemics?

Will the global financial crisis change the shape of Western society? Had the Asian tsunami of struck a developed country, the ripples would have been felt all over the world.

The past is rarely a reliable guide to the future. A study of history reveals that events often follow a non-linear path and that present realities and trends are, at best, a rough guide to the future. For centuries, Europe dominated the world and the rivalries among European powers both in Europe and in far-flung colonies had a global impact.

Yet today, despite its economic strength, Europe is not a major military power or a serious global geopolitical player, with most of its diplomatic energies focused on trying to handle the problems of EU integration and expansion, and in preventing the re-emergence of old fault lines.

If the world has changed, so has India. For the first time ever, a government has barely survived a confidence motion on a foreign policy issue. That is a huge turning point for a country that is sometimes suspected of not even having a foreign policy. In the years immediately after Independence, there were impassioned debates about the domestic policies that India should take—the capitalist or the socialist form of development, the emphasis on industry versus agriculture or the importance given to higher education compared to primary education.

Similar debates were missing in the foreign policy arena. Not that India had many choices. India was relatively weak, its future uncertain, and the influence of foreign powers on India considerable. Half a century later, the situation is quite different. It remains subject to outside pressures, but it is no longer a mere pawn on the world stage; it is also a player.

The short answer is: the baneful effects of the politics of cultural identity throughout South Asia arising out of a collective failure to recognize and acknowledge that South Asia has a distinctive personality and intertwined history arising out of its definite geographic identity.

Virtually cut off from the rest of the world by the Himalayas to the north, the Indian Ocean to the south, thick forests to the east, and deserts to the west, its inhabitants traditionally had relatively few contacts with the outside world. At the same time, the absence of any significant internal geographical barriers, other than the Central Indian forests and mountains accounting for the somewhat different history north and south of the Vindhyas created an inevitable geographical, cultural, economic and ecological interdependence of all parts of this vast expanse of territory.

These circumstances gave to the heartland of the South Asian sub-continent, covering the bulk of the territory of present-day India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, a broadly common history and led to the evolution of a unique civilization and culture. But even these regions had considerable interaction with, and were greatly influenced by, the heartland. This is even more true for a land as steeped in culture and tradition as South Asia, with religion as the key element shaping the collective personality of the people and governing their daily lives.

An offshoot of Hinduism, Buddhism rejected the evils of the Hindu caste system, but retained its moral and ethical codes, and the principal features of its philosophy.

Buddha is revered among Hindus as an avatar of Vishnu. Islam, as practised in South Asia, has a distinct sub-continental character, very different from the Islam practised in the Arab world, Southeast Asia and Africa. This is not so surprising, considering that the overwhelming majority of the Muslims in the sub-continent are converts from Hinduism. Despite the fundamental anti-caste character of Sikhism, the caste system has carried over into Sikh traditions as well. The dividing line between Hinduism and Sikhism, at least in popular perceptions, is not clear.

Hindus and Sikhs freely visit gurudwaras and temples, and inter-marry. Some Hindu families have a tradition that one son becomes a Sikh while the others remain Hindus.

In South Asia, neither religion nor race nor language constitutes a basis for developing a unique national identity. On the other hand, there is a commonality in dress, food habits, marriage and social customs and, most importantly, the way of thinking of the South Asian people, regardless of religion. The South Asian obsession with cricket reflects a common culture. Popular films, music, songs and dance also transcend all political frontiers. All South Asian countries have an uncanny common political culture.

Other commonalities are the political legitimacy of heredity and kinship, the ability of women to become political leaders and, regrettably, political violence. Probably in no other part of the world have there been so many political assassinations.

All these common characteristics of the people of South Asia can be explained by the deep cultural and psychological bonds, a kind of emotional unity, among the people of South Asia, arising out of their sub- conscious recognition that South Asia constitutes a distinct civilization.

Outsiders too have regarded India—not the modern nation- state of India but the geographical entity of South Asia—as a distinct civilization. When the Spanish and the Portuguese started their voyages of exploration in the 15th century, it was in search of India. While Vasco da Gama actually reached India in , Christopher Columbus who reached the shores of the American continent a few years earlier thought he had reached India.

In the pre-modern era, Europeans understandably initially mistook other parts of the world with which they came into contact to be India since they were aware of only the Indian civilization as another flourishing developed civilization.

The West Indies and the East Indies got their names in a similar fashion. British colonial rule gave rise to a shared elite culture in undivided India.

So were the institutions and laws. In countries where the British impact was not so direct, for example Nepal and Bhutan, their respective elites are distinctive. Historically, the dividing lines between different religious, linguistic, ethnic and other South Asian communities were never sharp or clear-cut. All modern South Asian countries are multi-ethnic and multi-religious societies, and attempts to repudiate the reality that religious and cultural roots extend beyond national frontiers lead to many inconvenient and illogical contradictions.

The Holy Vedas of the Hindus have their origins in the territory of present-day Pakistan. The sub- continental Muslim culture and the Urdu language, which Pakistan claims as its cultural heritage, have their roots in Delhi and western Uttar Pradesh.

The holy places of Buddhism, the dominant religion in Bhutan, Sri Lanka and northern Nepal, are in India and the Terai belt of Nepal where Buddhism does not have any strong roots or large following. It is not easy to uproot or disown the cultural inheritance going back many centuries. The question of cultural identity is not merely theoretical but has a profound practical relevance.

It has affected the politics of the South Asian countries, both within the respective countries as well as in intra-State relations.

Differences over culture have retarded development in all countries. The creation of Pakistan was a manifestation of cultural separatism, the essence of its ideology, a denial of its common cultural roots with India. For Bangladesh, its War of Independence in was about preserving its cultural identity against West Pakistani, specifically Punjabi, political and economic domination. However, in reasserting Bengali nationalism, it has excluded the other cultural and social groups like the Adibashis, the Chakmas and the Garos.

In recent years, it has understated its Bengali character, which it has in common with West Bengal, and over-stated its Islamic character. Nepal, at least till recently, retained its sense of identity by emphasizing the role of the Hindu monarch as a factor of unity, as well as by small but telling practices like a unique time zone, a unique flag shape and a unique official dress. The origins of the conflict in Sri Lanka lie in the attempt of the Sinhala community to evolve a Sinhala— Buddhist cultural identity to the exclusion of its Tamil heritage.

Maldives, isolated from the mainland, developed a unique national identity created out of the interplay of influences from India, Sri Lanka as well as the Persian and Arab world. Common Heritage vs Modern Identities The modern nations of South Asia have emerged as separate entities just over six decades ago, a relatively short period in the history of this ancient land.

As sovereign and independent countries, they have acquired new political and juridical personalities, taken separate paths of development, and understandably seek to project a distinct cultural tradition as an expression of their nationalism and separate identity. Obviously, it is not because of paucity of resources—no other part of the world is so blessed with abundant sunshine and water, or because people are not talented or hard working, South Asians seem to do very well when they migrate abroad.

South Asia has not developed or progressed as much as it could have because the people of South Asia over-emphasize their newest identity as citizens of one country or another and underplay their shared cultural heritage and traditions with other South Asians. A major challenge before all South Asian countries is how to reconcile and harmonize the common cultural heritage of the South Asian sub-continent with the preservation of their separate modern political identities.

Questions arise. How long can a country keep alive its artificially cultivated identity by a selective emphasis of some, and a deliberate denial of other, elements of its past? Are the centuries-old traditions less important than the decades-old ones? Is the religious identity more important than the regional or cultural identity?

Is the modern experience more relevant than the ancient inheritance? The way it has been handled in South Asia so far, culture has been a divisive and debilitating factor. It need not be so. The common cultural heritage of South Asia can, and should, promote unity, harmony and mutually beneficial development.

South Asia has had a long tradition of communal harmony and peaceful coexistence through the centuries, at least till the colonial era. Rulers may have been intolerant, but at the popular level South Asia was spared prolonged bloody religious wars like the Crusades or the Catholic—Protestant enmities of the medieval times.

However, since the birth of new nations in South Asia in the second half of the 20th century, this region has been beset with enormous violence and killings. But never in its history has it been divided along such irrational lines. It is not possible to have mono-religious, ethnically or linguistically homogeneous States in South Asia. The idea was tried through the creation of Pakistan in , but has failed. The Tamil conflict brings out that it is not possible to have a stable Sri Lanka with Sinhala—Buddhist domination.

The Nepali ruling elite, dominated by people from the hills, cannot wish away the Madhesis of the Terai who constitute nearly half the population of Nepal. Unfortunately, many South Asian countries have wrapped their respective national flags around an exclusivist, somewhat artificial, identity based on religion or ethnicity. Is South Asia home to so many so-called failed States because the concept of nation- hood in South Asia is flawed?

Is South Asia one of the poorest regions in the world because South Asian political leaders have deliberately chosen to underplay the interdependence, complementarities and commonalities of the region?

Instead of taking advantage of their common cultural heritage and natural synergies—including institutions and inter-connected physical infrastructure inherited from colonial times—to collectively play their rightful role in the world, South Asians are a divided lot working at cross-purposes.

Instead of using their common traditions to increase their collective strength and bargaining power, South Asians are enfeebled by internal rivalries and jealousies. Challenges before India How to change this state of affairs?

Here the lead must inevitably be taken by India. The challenges are formidable. India cannot hope to remain prosperous if its neighbours languish. Growing economic opportunities in India will inevitably generate cross-border flows of legal and illegal economic migrants across porous and laxly policed borders from the poorer regions in South Asia. The open border regime with Nepal has led to a regular flow of Nepali immigrants to India; it has also acted as a safety valve in Nepal. From Bangladesh, a steady stream of illegal migrants numbering more than 20 million has fanned out across India and changed the demographic profile in the neighbouring states of West Bengal, Tripura and Assam, as well as in Delhi.

It has spawned many terrorist cells within India. Only along the India— Pakistan border has the fencing worked, that too because a strip of land along the border has been cleared of population. Border fencing on the Bangladesh border has been ineffective in stopping illegal Bangladeshi migrants from coming into India.

This is hardly surprising. Even the US, with its vastly superior resources and technology, has been unable to control illegal migration from Mexico across a riverine border running through thinly populated arid territory. Where is the hope that India can control borders that cut through thickly populated areas with dense vegetation, particularly when the country on the other side of the border is covertly encouraging emigration to reduce its own problems?

A change of strategy is called for. In order to foster greater mutual confidence and trust, India has to devote much more time and attention to its neighbours. There should be more frequent high-level visits, telephonic conversations and informal contacts, using pegs like private visits, religious pilgrimages and transit halts in order to make personal assessments, exchange views, resolve problems—and massage egos! Discussions should not be confined to purely bilateral issues but cover regional and global issues too.

This would convey the message that India considers its neighbours sufficiently important to have an exchange of views on a broad spectrum of global and regional issues. India also has to be generous and magnanimous in stimulating the economic development of its neighbours. It has to make its neighbours willing partners in its own growth and prosperity. The steps taken by India so far can be supplemented by generous technical and economic assistance and large-scale investments in order to build up their infrastructure.

These must be high visibility projects that impact on and improve the lives of common people in the neighbouring countries, not projects that can be criticised as bringing benefit to India only. Hopefully, this would reduce the pressure for people to want to migrate to India in search of greener pastures.

Reciprocally, India should welcome investment by businessmen from neighbouring countries. Finally, India needs to put in place more liberal and streamlined border trade arrangements. In the absence of a clear strategic approach to promote the economic development of its neighbouring countries, India has left the space open for other countries like China, the US, the United Kingdom as well as a host of smaller donors belonging to the West, whose economic influence in these countries easily gets translated into political influence.

This is an anomaly. Unwarranted mutual suspicions and political hesitations have stunted the natural integrated growth and development of the countries of the region.

Despite so many agreed areas of cooperation, innumerable institutional mechanisms and a permanent Secretariat, South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation SAARC has not taken off as a meaningful framework for regional cooperation.

Even summits have not been held regularly. So far SAARC has been basically a talk-shop, or at best a consultative body, without any concrete collaborative project to show.

The silver lining is that the relatively low level of regional trade and economic activity in the region only underlines the large potential for expanding trade and investment, which will translate into jobs and economic growth for all countries in the region. When President Zia-ur-Rahman of Bangladesh first proposed the setting up of SAARC in the early s, it was not born out of any genuine desire for regional cooperation.

India has tended to regard SAARC summits mostly as a venue for bilateral diplomacy with Pakistan, or to signal unhappiness with a neighbour. Bangladesh too is not blameless. It should not be forgotten that Bangladesh was once part of Pakistan and its ruling elite, particularly the military, remain under considerable Pakistani influence.

The problem with Pakistan and Bangladesh is that they have a mindset that is not matched by objective realities. They realize, but do not acknowledge, that they cannot match India, but their response is to seek to bring India down.

Unless all the countries of the organisation share a common security perspective, it will be difficult to move forward in any meaningful way on regional economic cooperation. Regional economic cooperation—the European Union and ASEAN are good examples—requires a degree of trust and goodwill, which in turn presupposes that all participants share a common political and strategic perspective.

Since Pakistan and Bangladesh continue to foment terrorist activities against the Indian State and people, such a precondition is clearly missing.

Things may be changing. All of them are deeply engaged with India. Some are wooing India, others seeking to contain it. Given the global significance of the long-term direction that South Asia takes, the world is understandably interested in the future of SAARC. Cooperative, trustful and harmonious relations between India and its neighbours could make South Asia a truly dynamic engine of growth for the region and a pole of influence in the world.

This is welcome. India is more self-confident, its economy more open and its foreign policy more diversified and pragmatic. As a rising power aspiring to play a greater regional and global role and to become a Permanent Member of the UN Security Council, India would hardly want to be perceived as being obstructionist, narrow-minded and insecure.

It must show that it is a true regional leader, not the neighbourhood bully. India appears to have understood this. These initiatives need to be followed up. If people belonging to different countries within the region do not interact with and understand one another sufficiently well, there can hardly be meaningful regional cooperation. Hence the importance of people-to- people contacts, for which better physical connectivity is an essential pre-requisite.

The South Asian countries are denied the economic advantages of large-scale cross-border trade and economic activity like tourism. Personal and family contacts have been disrupted. Without wide-ranging people-to-people interaction, misunderstandings and apprehensions are not likely to go away, nor can there realistically be any meaningful regional cooperation.

The establishment of direct air flights between the SAARC capitals is a good start, but it is overland connectivity that is crucial. The real challenges will be in establishing transit facilities from India across Pakistan to Afghanistan and across Bangladesh to the Northeast Region of India. SAARC should also concentrate on forging a South Asian identity, and focusing on areas where the common interests of the member-countries outweigh their differences.

Environmen- tal challenges, control of communicable diseases and pandem- ics, countering drug smuggling and tackling the trafficking of women and children are some promising areas of cooperation. Above all, the South Asian countries have a common interest in cooperation on water resources.

Although differences remain, the countries of the South Asian sub-continent are already engaged in much deeper cooperation than countries similarly placed elsewhere in the world. Upper riparian India bears the brunt of any untoward happening in Tibet—as happened when the Sutlej River flooded large parts of Himachal Pradesh in , and the Parechu River threatened to do in —but any depletion of water flows into India will ultimately affect lower riparians Pakistan and Bangladesh too.

This is a real danger since there is talk in China of diverting rivers rising in Tibet and flowing into the sub-continent. Any irresponsible Chinese activity in Tibet could accelerate the shrinking of Tibetan glaciers and change the climate that sustains the hundreds of millions of inhabitants in South Asia.

The very existence of a low-lying country like Bangladesh or a small island country like the Maldives could be threatened. If these scenarios do come to pass, such Chinese behaviour would be definitely considered a hostile act by all South Asian countries. India has already started discussions with China, and there is an agreement for exchange of hydrological data, but it would be much better if India, Pakistan and Bangladesh could jointly broach this subject with China.

Russia and Kazakhstan are talking to China on this subject since major rivers like the Irtysh and Ili flow from China into these countries. Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam are already facing depleted flows in the Mekong and Salween because of dams built upstream by the Chinese.

But domestic political turmoil in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka, not to speak of political uncertainties in India itself, made it difficult to move ahead with bold initiatives. The problem of tackling terrorism will have to be squarely addressed without pussyfooting. India can be expected to nip in the bud incipient trends to give outside powers too much role in financing development projects so that SAARC does not deviate from its stated goal of collective self-reliance.

One hopes that better sense will prevail. Sharing many complementarities with India, they can become globally competitive if they take full advantage of their geographical proximity to India. All of them have a deep understanding of India, and are well networked with key players in India. But they have to honestly answer some hard questions. Will the global competitiveness of Pakistan and Bangladesh improve if they are economically integrated with India?

Or do these countries believe that their growth, development and prosperity could be autonomously generated? They are more receptive to cooperation within a regional framework than on a bilateral basis, perhaps because numbers give them a sense of greater security.

All South Asian countries need to look beyond existing political prejudices and think of what they must collectively do in a globalized, fast-changing world if they are not to be left behind. The problem is that while India is an established and vibrant secular democracy, its neighbours are not. India will always remain an unspoken factor in the domestic politics of its neighbours—and, to a lesser extent, vice versa.

Willy-nilly, the Indian model of democracy exerts a powerful influence on politics in neighbouring countries. Sensing the changing winds, Bhutan is moving towards a constitutional monarchy and Maldives towards a multiparty democratic system.

India is interested in democratic neighbours because regimes that are elected by and accountable to the people are likely to be more cooperative and friendly to India since there is a much greater coincidence of interests among ordinary people, rather than the elites, of South Asia.

Democratic governments in South Asia are also likely to be more stable. Non-democratic governments create a political void that is readily filled by religious obscurantists, extremists and fundamentalists. Similarly, the China chapter demonstrates that New Delhi and Beijing are stuck in an adversarial relationship that cannot be rectified beyond a certain point. The author, for example, correctly points out why Russia and India have distanced themselves from each other in the aftermath of the Cold War but his suggestions that India recognize that Russia is no longer a defeated power and treat it accordingly can be questioned.

Demographic trends suggest that Russia is in the midst of a population meltdown which will see Russia move from million people in to about million in with a male to female ratio of and a population in of 60 million odd men and 71 million odd women. This is a country which is in population tailspin and unless it can bring in large numbers of immigrants in the next decade its population profile will be that of an elderly nation—not the ideal workforce or technological engine of the 21st century.

Nor does Russia have the techno-military muscle to influence events beyond its borders in the way it used to with the exception of oil and gas and both these products are susceptible to market and technological shifts. Additionally, Russian foreign policy, as the author points out is western centric and this makes strategic collaboration with India difficult—some Russians economists, for example, are unhappy that their country gets lumped in BRIC because the other three nations are developing.

Similarly, on the energy issue, India has few clear cut alternatives.