Beyond symbolism: What Nobel Peace Prize means for India and Pakistan

The symbolism of the joint 2014 Nobel Peace Prize for a veteran Indian child rights activist and a Pakistani teenager who defied the Taliban to emerge as an icon of the girl’s right to education is compelling. The Nobel committee may not have envisaged relentless firing and hostility between the border troops of the two countries when they decided to award the Nobel to them, but the timing of the announcement has lent an extra resonance to this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. It has underlined the need for the two estranged South Asia countries to stop firing at each other, but to focus their energies instead on stamping out myriad social evils that hold up the enormous potential of their combined 1.4 billion people.
This is no time, therefore, for self-congratulatory spiel for both India and Pakistan. The struggle against poverty and multifarious forms of social injustice is only going to get harder if both nations persist in self-defeating, destructive spiral of mutual belligerence and recriminations. “The Nobel Committee regards it as an important point for a Hindu and a Muslim, an Indian and a Pakistani, to join in a common struggle for education and against extremism,” said Thorbjoern Jagland, the head of the Norwegian Nobel Committee. The Nobel Committee has sent a potent message across, and it’s time for the leaders and people for both nations to heed that message, carefully, and in their own national interests.

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Pakistan’s Dangerous Game of Brinkmanship

Insecure Pakistan in the backdrop of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan is faced with the twin dilemma of international marginalization as part of fast receding regional relevance and political and economic instability. These fears are heightened by India’s rapidly developing economy, political stability and fast paced modernization of its armed forces. For Pakistani fed on the belief, as Christian Fair puts it ‘accepting the status quo with India is a defeat’, such a scenario is an anathema that it is loathe to accept. This ideological perspective remains the driver that is forcing the Pakistani army in taking calculated military risks as a manifestation of its continued struggle which it must continue and persevere. According to Fair this behaviour of Pakistan is a result of it being fundamentally a dissatisfied state which seeks to increase its prestige through spread of its ideology and religion in pursuit of its revisionist policies.

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Oslo Calling: Why Norway matters to India

The three-day state visit by President Pranab Mukherjee to Norway beginning October 12 is indicative of the growing importance New Delhi is now attaching to its ties with Oslo, described by a senior Indian diplomat as “problem-free” in all these many years. There are several reasons why India is seeking to push for even closer ties across a range of areas with Norway, not the least of which would be greater co-operation in the energy sector.
India is also eyeing a larger slice of the pie from the Norwegian Government Pension Fund, which is the largest sovereign wealth fund in Europe with $ 850 billion in its kitty. Keen to give the infrastructure and other sectors the necessary boost, India wants a substantial increase in the current investment that stands at a piffling $4 billion at present.

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No politics please, India has responded to Pakistan’s aggression with courage: PM

Don’t play politics with issues of national security. Talking straight, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi turned on his critics who has charged him of soft-pedalling Pakistan’s ceasefire violations as he asserted that India has responded to the aggression with courage.
“Today, when bullets are being fired on the border, it is the enemy that is screaming. Our jawans have responded to the aggression with courage,” Modi said at an election rally at Baramati in Maharashtra, India’s poll-bound western state.
The recent wave of violence along the India-Pakistan border in Jammu and Kashmir has been the worst of its kind in more than a decade. The timing of the relentless firing seeing in the last few days by the Pakistan Rangers on the Indian posts, killing and wounding several civilians, shows the hand of Pakistan’s powerful military, which is desperately trying to keep the Kashmir issue alive internationally amid a renewed global confidence in the India Story.

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India calls Pakistan aggressor, warns adventurism will be costly

Calling Pakistan an aggressor, India has toughened its stance on what it sees as unprovoked ceasefire violations, with the country’s defence minister warning grimly that Indian forces will “make this adventurism costly and unaffordable.”
“Pakistan in these attacks has clearly been the aggressor but it must realise that our deterrence will be credible. If Pakistan persists with this adventurism, our forces will make the cost of this adventurism unaffordable,’’ Defence Minister Arun Jaitley said in a statement on border situation in Jammu and Kashmir.
The worst ceasefire violations in more than a decade, which has killed nine people and displaced several hundreds, has stressed India-Pakistan ties, with the two countries indulging in an endless game of mutual recrimination. It’s not clear what’s driving this frenzy of unprovoked aggression from the Pakistani side, but many analysts see this as a desperate assertion by Pakistan’s all-powerful military to re-assert control over Islamabad’s New Delhi policy.

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Why China is wary of India-US statement on South China Sea

The first-ever reference to South China Sea in an India-US joint statement during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s trip to Washington has riled Beijing, and revived the latter’s fears about the world’s two largest democracies acting in concert on a larger China containment strategy.
Predictably, China, which, according to the IMF, has taken over the US to become the world’s largest economy on purchasing power parity terms, has asserted that the South China Sea sovereignty issue should be resolved directly by parties concerned and without meddling from any third party.
Much to the discomfort of Beijing, India’s Act East policy and the US rebalance to Asia are converging in some respects to promote peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific theatre.

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India-Pakistan border tensions: PM Modi gives ‘full hand’, says everything will be fine

Amid the most intense cross-border firing between India and Pakistan in a decade, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is reported to have given security forces a “free hand” in dealing with Pakistani troops, and assured that “everything will be fine soon.”
Nine Pakistani and eight Indian civilians have been slaughtered since fighting erupted more than week ago in the worst case of ceasefire violations since 2003. The two nuclear-armed South Asian neighbours have accused each other of targeting civilians and unprovoked violations of the 11-year-old ceasefire agreement.
The mood has turned sour and belligerent on both sides. India’s Home Minister Rajnath Singh has asked the Border Security Force to return Pakistan’s firing with full force.
Mr Modi, who surprised many by inviting Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, along with other leaders of the South Asian countries at his swearing-in ceremony in May, said in Kashmir cryptically: “Everything will be fine.” His statement seemed to indicate that India will retaliate with full vigour even as Pakistan raised the issue at the UN.

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