India Narrative

Russian energy major Rosneft has announced the discovery of a huge oil deposit on the shelf of the Pechora Sea flowing from the Ural Mountains to the Arctic Ocean in the northwest of Russia. Containing an estimated 82 million tonnes of oil, it is believed to be one of the largest discoveries on the Russian shelf in recent times. “The field was discovered based on the results of drilling a prospecting and appraisal well at the structure of the same name in the Medynsko-Varandeysky license area. The work was carried out by specialists from RN-Bureniye and RN-Shelf-Arktika (part of Rosneft) using advanced Russian equipment and in accordance with the highest standards of industrial safety and environmental protection. The resulting oil is light, low-sulfur, low viscosity," the company said in a statement recently. As geological explorations continue in the region, the latest discovery comes at a time when the Western countries remain committed to phase out dependency on Russian energy...

The Indian economy will eventually pick up despite inflation and challenges like domestic strife. On the other hand, there is a looming global unrest as public resentment against governments rise over food and fuel inflation. At Canary Wharf, one of London's premium destinations, India Narrative catches up with Supriya Ravishankar, working as a risk analyst with Sibylline, a strategic advisory firm, that identifies opportunities and forecast risks for the corporate sector. As the South Asia analyst, Ravishankar is constantly monitoring South Asian countries to provide analytical information to Sibylline’s clients which could include organisations ranging from the hospitality industry to publishing and media, finance and defence as well as international development organisations. She says that her job as a risk analyst involves constant monitoring of news, cross-verifying information, breaking-down complex events and presenting these to clients. “It is as much a communications job a...

Anil Kumar Baloch has spent almost half of his life in India. He spent the other half in Balochistan, Afghanistan, Russia and Kazakhstan. Now that he has settled in India, he is working in medical tourism—an interpreter and a medical tourist guide to people who come from half a dozen countries. "I know Russian, Hindi, Sindhi, Baloch and Pashto. I can also converse in Dari, which resembles Persian therefore I can interact with people from Iran as well", says Anil with a sense of justified pride. Struggle in New Delhi Life wasn't as easy in New Delhi. "My initial life in Delhi was a struggle. I tried my hand at many jobs—made credit cards, did odd jobs in shops and worked in a bank. None was easy”, says Baloch. One day, whiling away time with friends, an Afghan recommended him to utilise his multilingual skills to help people coming from Afghanistan as they faced problems in interacting with medical staff. "I began translation for Afghans coming to India for trea...

Hugs, handshakes and a lot of smiles - there was so much more at play than just mundane diplomacy when Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Emmanuel Macron, President of France, in Paris on Wednesday evening.  As India and France celebrate 75 years of their diplomatic relations, PM Modi was the first foreign leader received by Macron after his triumph in the presidential elections last month.  The impeccable trust and camaraderie that exists between the two leaders was quite visible from the warm welcome given by Macron to the Indian Prime Minister at Elysée Palace and in the talks - in one-on-one and delegation level formats - that followed.  Over the last few years, both leaders have given a new impetus to the India-France friendship and as Macron takes a fresh stance to begin his second innings, they once again displayed the spirit of trust and frankness that characterizes their relations. Read more  

For the West to build pressure on India to condemn Russia for its invasion of Ukraine as some kind of a political and moral obligation for a democracy is a brazenly manipulative exercise. If western democracies genuinely believe that all democratic countries have an obligation to band together against Russia on this issue shows how much they have become prisoners of their own rhetoric and are incapable of seeing the incongruities in their position. If, on the other hand, they are aware that they themselves have not adhered to the principle that they now espouse in the case of Russia, it denotes outright cynicism bred by a sense of unaccountable power. India, which has been a democracy since 1947, has not received any special consideration on the political economic and security fronts from the West. On the contrary, it has been subject to decades of sanctions in the strategic nuclear, space and high technology areas. It was pushed toward a close relationship with the Soviet Union in the...

India and Australia are taking their Comprehensive Strategic Partnership to a new level with extensive collaboration to identify opportunities for strategic investment in Australian critical minerals projects. During the second Virtual Summit between India and Australia on Monday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Australian counterpart, Scott Morrison welcomed the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed between India's Khanij Bidesh India Limited and Australia's Critical Minerals Facilitation Office on March 10. Through the MoU, Canberra is working with New Delhi to realise the shared ambition of developing robust and commercially viable critical minerals supply chains. "As you can imagine, this is an important area for both our countries and this agreement would give us the opportunities to both invest in Australia's critical mineral sector and get Australian expertise in this area," said Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla after the summit. Australia, ...

  On March 14, Nepalese media widely reported that Chinese Foreign Minister and State Councilor Wang Yi would visit Kathmandu on March 26 for a two-day visit. He would call on Prime Minister Deuba and hold talks with Foreign Minister Narayan Khadka. The visit could be related to signing documents related to projects that fall under China’s mega-connectivity Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Wang appears to be embarking on a pan-South Asia tour. The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) has confirmed having received a request from China for the visit. If New Delhi concurs, Wang’s visit would be the first high-level visit from China following the massive troops build along the Line of Actual Control after May 2020, followed by unarmed combat between the Indian and PLA troops in the Galwan valley area in which 20 Indian soldiers were killed and an unspecified number of Chinese troops lost their lives. But apart from the tensions along the border, especially in Eastern Ladakh, several other...

India on Wednesday continued to maintain its neutral stand as it abstained from voting on a UN General Assembly resolution that strongly deplored Russia's aggression against Ukraine. India’s abstention was in accordance with what the government has explained as the country’s consistent position that allows it to reach out to both sides to find a solution to the conflict through diplomacy and dialogue.  The 193-member General Assembly Wednesday voted to reaffirm its commitment to the sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders and "deplores in the strongest terms" Russia's aggression against Ukraine. The resolution was adopted with 141 votes in favour, five Member States voting against and 35 abstentions. Read More

  The year 2021 can possibly be called the most disruptive and devastating year in recent memory for the whole world. It had started on a muted positive note with vaccines becoming available to confront the once–in-a-century pandemic and with cautious optimism that the world would be able to overcome the health, economic and social challenges thrown up by the coronavirus. India had to handle its own share of trials during the year. At the end of 2021, India can look back with satisfaction upon the year just ended because it has been able to successfully overcome most of the difficulties that came its way starting with the second wave of Covid-19 and the steep decline of -7.3% in GDP during the last fiscal year. Other major challenges that had to be boldly confronted included the forcible wresting of power by the Taliban in Afghanistan and the continued standoff with China on India’s northern borders. Some of the major highlights of the Indian foreign policy during 2021 which give ...

  India has told China once again that assigning "invented names" to some places in Arunachal Pradesh will not change the reality. China's Ministry of Civil Affairs, in an announcement on Wednesday, had made official 15 publicly-used place names in southern Tibet - or Zangnan as the Chinese call Arunachal Pradesh - giving geographical coordinates of the locations in India's state.   "In accordance with the relevant regulations of the State Council on the management of geographical names, our ministry and relevant departments have standardized some geographical names in southern Tibet. The second batch of publicly-used place names in southern Tibet (15 in total) is now officially announced," said the Chinese ministry. Slamming Beijing's move, New Delhi said that it is not for the first time that China has attempted such a renaming of places in Arunachal Pradesh, having also assigned such names in April 2017. "Arunachal Pradesh has always been, and wi...

  According to Trading Economics, steel production in the country slowed to 71.6 million tonnes in October after touching almost 100 MT in May this year. The steel sector in China has been booming as the real estate industry drove the country’s economic growth. The uncertainty in the real estate sector would have a direct impact on other commodities such as cement and steel and this has happened when there are already major supply side constraints in the country,” DK Srivastava, chief policy adviser, EY India told India Narrative. Earlier Tata Steel’s managing director TV Narendran told the Economic Times that India could stand to benefit as China cuts production. “The forecast is that Chinese consumption will stay flat and consumption outside China will grow…the growth in consumption will be driven more by markets outside China, and I'm more positive about this industry in India,” the news organisation quoted Narendran as saying. The India Brand Equity Foundation noted that in 20...

  Indian and Taiwanese space organisations are collaborating with other international research bodies to launch a miniaturised satellite for space research in January 2022 . The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) and the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology are collaborating with Taiwan's National Space Organization (NSPO) in launching a CubeSat into space in January 2022. Other international collaborators include the University of Colorado Boulder and the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, says a report in Taiwan News. NSPO Director General Wu Jong-shinn expressed optimism about the future of cooperation between Taiwan and India on space projects. He added that India's nearly 500 space-related businesses could partner with Taiwan's strengths in the fields of semiconductors, ICT, and weather technologies to help the island nation develop its own space economy.

  As India and Bangladesh gear up to celebrate December 16 marked as Vijay Diwas for the South Asian nation, elaborate preparations are on even in the small northeastern state of Tripura. An emotional Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina during her trip Agartala in 2012 had recalled the immense contribution of the people of the northeatern state.” “If Bangladesh is India-locked, Tripura is Bangladesh-locked — goes an adage in the region,” a study by the Observer Research Foundation noted. India-Bangladesh relations have typically been driven by an overpowering narrative that emphasizes the commonalities between the people of West Bengal and the South Asian nation. True the two share common culture, language and food habits but the role of other states including that of Tripura, that is almost tucked within Bangladesh, cannot be ignored. Also read: Maitri Diwas: From physical to emotional connectivity—the way forward for Indo-Bangladesh ties “About 84 per cent of the state’s bo...

  In the two decades since India and Russia declared a new strategic partnership, the global geopolitical landscape has undergone major transformations. While the partnership retains a strong strategic content, its course has inevitably been impacted by shifting equations between major global powers. This aspect is likely to figure prominently on the dialogue agenda of President Putin and Prime Minister Modi on December 6 . Over these two decades, India-US political and economic relations surged and, after the India-US nuclear deal of 2008, defence and technology cooperation took off as well. Among the US motivations to strengthen partnership with India was that a strong, democratic India could be a useful partner for the US in Asia, where China was emerging as a formidable rival. India welcomed this premise, as well as the opportunity to diversify military acquisitions from near-exclusive dependence on Russia. Russia-US relations were already somewhat strained in the early 2000s, ...

  Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to India on December 6 represents a huge upturn in the India-Russia relations . This will be the first international bilateral visit by Putin since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic about two years ago. The fact that Putin’s first stand-alone visit is to India is reaffirmation of the underlying strength and resilience of the India-Russia relationship, notwithstanding the rapid flux in geo-politics in the region.  Putin’s earlier visit outside Russia was in June this year to Geneva for a summit with President Joe Biden. That was, however, an interaction in a third country and not a bilateral visit to another country. Putin’s visit can also be seen as his way of signalling that although Russia’s relations with China are vital and critical, particularly because of Russia’s heavy dependence on China for export of its oil, gas and defence equipment as also because of the stringent sanctions imposed on it by the West as a result of Crim...