The present volume comes out of a conference held by the IFPS in collaboration with CPWAS at Calcutta University in March 2012. The volume comprises of eight essays highlighting on various approaches to the question of instability in India's western neighbourhood, and what it could mean for India. The issues covered include the domestic dynamics of Pakistan, Afghanistan, the extent to which these have a bearing on the foreign policy of the Government of India, and the economic and social cost extracted by the aura of instability that has come to characterise the neighbourhood.

The Arab Spring, widely perceived as a momentous event in West Asia, has evoked a persistent flow of interpretation and analysis by academic experts and policy-makers since the upheaval first broke out in December 2010 and the pace of events suggests the flow of analysis on this issue will continue. Like all great social upheavals, the Arab Spring was long-drawn-out in its realisation and born of many factors that are intertwined. It could have occurred any time during the course of the last two or three decades but each passing year brought to the forefront new developments that made it that much more imminent. Economic problems, social problems, political problems, juridical problems and diplomatic problems combined to contribute to an uncompromising sense of grievance across the Arab world that ultimately manifested itself in the Arab spring and winter of 2011. This volume comes out of a conference organised by the Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute of Asian Studies, in collaboration with Institute of Foreign Policy Studies and Centre of Pakistan and West Asian Studies, in which an attempt was made to discuss these issues threadbare.

The ongoing political turmoil in the Middle East as a whole would seem to be essentially a contest between the minimalist and maximalist positions on popular sovereignty: should power merely come from, and be exercised in the name of, the people? Or, should those in power be fully accountable to the people? The dilemma warrants a closer look. The present volume comes out of an international conference held in Calcutta, India organised by the Institute of Foreign Policy Studies and the Centre for Pakistan and West Asian Studies, University of Calcutta in March 2013. This volume aims not at a definitive analysis of why what happened did happen; it aims instead at getting a sense of what was actually happening, and what is at issue.

The region of the Middle East is beset with a structural crisis of which particular crises confronting the component countries happen to be merely subsets. The real questions revolve round the issue of how long can the present dispensations of power and social structures in the region forged in the twentieth century (first half or second) can last in the twenty-first, when they no longer reflect the realities on the ground. This volume aims to look at some of the issues to see how the faultlines in the region appear in 2020 to both those in the region, and those outside it. The volume limits itself to only Levant and the Gulf and looks at the tensions within and policies (both foreign and domestic) of some of the key regional players which have regional repercussions. It also looks at the policies of some of the global players operating in the region that have bearing on the regional faultlines. Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Bhutan)

The Foreign Policy of India, at least up to the end of the Cold War, has often been charged with an inward-looking South Asian orientation, a deadening preoccupation with the immediate neighbourhood, and a sort of tunnel vision. Such allegations have considerable substance when pertaining to the region of the Middle East, with the peoples of which Indian people have enjoyed a relationship that predates the present framework of nations-states literally by millennia. At a time when the Indian economy seems to be going through a stellar rise, it is useful for India to develop a policy of engagement with the Middle East. Unlike most other countries India actually has human ties with the region that very few other peoples have-ties that were forged by generations of people travelling between India and the Middle East, settling down in each other's lands before the borders became hard. Some observers have argued that the government of India needs develop a more dynamic policy towards the region because of the large number of Indians working in the petroleum economies-from the Gulf states right down to Libya. The present volume comes out of a conference organised by the Institute of Foreign Policy Studies in association with the Centre for Pakistan and West Asia Studies, Calcutta University in the month of February 2011, as the Arab Spring was beginning to stir the region. It also marked the completion of two decades of India's economic liberalisation as well as foreign policy reorientation. The volume primarily means to address (as did the conference) the terms of India's re-orientation of policy towards the region, as also the various dynamics that condition such engagement.

Behind the spectacle of entertainment, sport is a subject with political issues at every level. These issues range from the social, with divisions created along gender and class lines, to the use of sport to pursue diplomatic and statecraft goals. In addition, some sports are positioned and promoted as national events both in public opinion and in the media. This book seeks to explore some aspects of the notion of power in sport in south Asia and among south Asians abroad. The first two chapters deal with the internal societal dimensions of the politics of sport; the next three relate to the politics inside the sporting world in the subcontinent and its bridge with the broader arena of the society through the media, while the last five relate to the use of sports in statecraft, consensus building and international politics. This book was based on two special issues of the International Journal of the History of Sport.

Behind the spectacle of entertainment, sport is a subject with political issues at every level. These issues range from the social, with divisions created along gender and class lines, to the use of sport to pursue diplomatic and statecraft goals. In addition, some sports are positioned and promoted as national events both in public opinion and in the media.

This book seeks to explore some aspects of the notion of power in sport in south Asia and among south Asians abroad. The first two chapters deal with the internal societal dimensions of the politics of sport; the next threearelate to the politics inside the sporting world in the subcontinent and its bridge with the broader arena of the society through the media, while the last fivearelate to the use of sports in statecraft, consensus building and international politics.

This book was based on two special issues of the International Journal of the History of Sport."