flat world

The 46-year-old Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada with his family is in India for the first time on a week-long tour, and it is drawing out a mountain of comment. I thought I would wait a few days to let the dust settle a bit, and then add my own. Criticisms and opinions are coming from many quarters, policymakers, experts, think tanks, and journalists from both India and Canada. More interesting are the comments of independent thinkers and their tweets. To a lot of foreign policy participants, it is baffling when a rock-star premier of a country like Canada making no sound and weight on a visit. Normally, when any foreign premier visits India, until their departure the headlines are reserved for the news and dealings they make. Well, in case of Trudeau, the same pattern is being followed, only in a cold way. Prime Minister Narendra Modi embraces Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau during a ceremonial reception at the Presidential Palace in New Delhi on Feb...

If one goes by some selective parameters, the world is definitely on an optimistic path, a vibrant one with a healthy future. The global economy is robust, growing from the U.S to India, China to Southern Africa, Brazil to Australia, European markets on a fast recovery mode, progressing technology and energetic stock markets like never before. Getting consumed by all these euphoric numbers, we often tend to overlook certain parameters, exploring deep gives us an altered picture, in simple, we need to worry about a lot of things from growing inequality, concentration of economic wealth in a few, falling governance standards, lack of political consensus while solving global threats and so on. In the recent past, the global setting has evolved swiftly: geostrategic fractures have re-emerged on several fronts with across-the-board political and socio-economic consequences. On global political context, ‘Realpolitik’ is no more a cold war vocabulary. Economic affluence and social con...