Shankar Roychowdhury

Apr 26, 2010
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Shankar Roychowdhury

Libya’s smoke signals

Libya: Someone else’s war, in someone else’s country, and Col. Muammar el-Gaddafi a strange figure about whom not much is known in India.
India has no real major strategic concerns in Libya other than of economic outreach. Here, an undoubtedly significant Indian presence has been built up in terms of investments in the oil, petrochemical, information technology

Sail at your own peril

Paying more for petrol? Blame part of it on Somali pirates in the Arabian Sea, whose attacks on commercial shipping, often close to the western seaboard of India, have drastically escalated maritime risk insurance rates for ships traversing the region. In 2010, 445 such attacks were reported. From 2009, the attacks have increased by 10 per cent, as a result of which the Joint War Risks Committee of Lloyds, London, expanded the boundaries of their “risk exclusion zone” for insurance against piracy, from Longitude 065 degrees East to 078 degrees East.

Blood in Brahmaputra

With the recent killing of 24 “Indians” by militants of the separatist National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) in the Bongaigaon and Darrang districts of Upper Assam, the organisation declared the entire north bank region of the Brahmaputra as the territory of a separate Bodoland. It asked all non-Bodos to vacate the area. The killings were a show of force in a proclaimed policy of “20 for one”, i.e. kill 20 “Indians” regardless of age or gender in reprisal for any Bodo killed during internal security operations.

Anarchy vs hierarchy

The furore over the abduction of R. Vineel Krishna, IIT Madras alumnus and Malkangiri district collector, by Naxalites died down with his release from captivity after nine days. Malkangiri district is an appendix of Orissa jutting into Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh — an administrative never-never land with the barest traces of official

India’s bitter half

The gloves are off in Europe. Lord Alexander Carlile, QC, was appointed by the British government to review the country’s anti-terrorist legislation. The publication of his final report strongly states that Britain’s long-standing efforts at “multiculturalism” in respect to immigrant communities does not seem to be working. In fact, it is turning Britain into a safe haven for terrorists, especially from immigrant communities, primarily because of rulings by the European Court of Human Rights that made it difficult to deport people considered terrorist risks, and other decisions that curbed the application of British anti-terrorist laws.

The blood patriot

“Ittehad, Itmad, Qurbani” (Unity, faith, sacrifice)
— Motto of the Azad Hind Fauj (The Indian National Army)

The 114th birth anniversary of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose — recently commemorated on January 23, 2011 — is an appropriate occasion to remember him and the Az

A republic needs rules

“Little drops of water, little grains of sand, make the mighty ocean and the beauteous land…”
But what about little drops of blood? What do they create?

Noose or necklace?

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s visit to India in December 2010 provides an appropriate occasion to ruminate on issues that were not reflected in the official agenda. Amongst them is the resurgence of China’s maritime strategy in the Indian Ocean, popularly captioned as “string of pearls”, coined from a report prepared for the

Arms and the man

If wars can be classified as good, bad or indifferent in terms of their impact on the national psyche, then Bangladesh 1971 was a very good war for India and the Sino-Indian border war of 1962 a very

Army’s softer face

“Women hold up half the sky” — an ancient Chinese proverb favoured by Mao Zedong.
The recent grant of permanent commission to 12 women officers in the legal and education branches of the Indian Army and awarding the prestigious Sword of Honour to a woman cadet at the Officers Training Academy, Chennai, must be considered in the context of Mao Zedong’s aphorism and its military connotations. Present

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