Medha Bisht is Senior Assistant Professor at South Asian University, New Delhi; and former Associate Fellow at Manohar Parrikar IDSAClick here for detailed profile.
The choice of words Taliban employs to communicate with the international community is symptomatic not only of the limits of inter-cultural communication, but also depicts how meanings move across geo-cultural spaces and that “right” vocabularies are being used indeed as a qualifier to join the community of nations.
Theorising about international relations in South Asia is a daunting task for any scholar of International Relations. The challenge lies in explaining the causal forces behind state behaviour, in order to illuminate a pattern for arriving at an understanding of these relations in a parsimonious manner.
This monograph undertakes a descriptive analysis of the water sector in Pakistan and underlines issues related to Pakistan’s water policies, politics and management practices. It argues that domestic water management is perhaps one of the key areas which requires urgent attention in Pakistan.
Given Bhutan’s strategic significance India needs to respond sensitively to its Himalayan neighbour so as to create further goodwill for the long term.
The article argues that as India and Bhutan have moved into the second phase of power cooperation, it is important that the two countries revisit their policies and identify approaches that will be sustainable in the long term. The article emphasises that a sub-regional energy grid between Bhutan, India and Bangladesh can become an effective conduit for strengthening sub-regional diplomacy and help in addressing the latent but underlying concerns of Bhutan, which have the potential to impact India–Bhutan bilateral relations in the long term.
The question of Sino-Bhutan diplomatic relations, which is essentially linked to a settled boundary line between the two countries, is a matter of strategic choice for Bhutan.
While loans, grants and lines of credit offer a solution to deal with immediate crises, it is important to gauge the long-term impact of such Indian policies on India-Bhutan relations.
There is an ongoing debate about the nature of changing power equations (economic, political and military) among countries, with many scholars arguing that the power shift from the West to the East is inevitable in the coming years. While the debate is animated by scholars such as Kishore Mehbubani, G.
In order to obviate myopic policies that could jeopardise the bonhomie in India-Bangladesh relations, the technical underpinnings of the project need to be jointly undertaken by both countries.
Taliban Talks to “International Community”
The choice of words Taliban employs to communicate with the international community is symptomatic not only of the limits of inter-cultural communication, but also depicts how meanings move across geo-cultural spaces and that “right” vocabularies are being used indeed as a qualifier to join the community of nations.