The ebbs and flows of Indian history can also be charted through the country's "maritime blindness" - its onset and the national endeavour to overcome it. The story of developing India's maritime capacity, since independence, is also about the kind of international and regional footprint it needs to have. In this book, the author discusses India's new and old maritime challenges and contextualises them in terms of its inherent institutional strengths to cope with their bewildering complexity. Their complexity is not just due to their sheer scale; the degrading institutional capacities, within countries and internationally, act as threat multipliers. The dynamics of global geopolitics, the seismic perturbations of global economy, and the dizzying pace of technology belie presuppositions for global future; all strategic analysts recognise our current, persisting conundrums. Taking into account the country's critical strategic weight in the maritime domain, the author suggests an approach - about the right 'mix' of the 'traditional' and the 'non-traditional' threats - in the institutional agendas of various governance mechanisms concerning different water bodies, especially the Indian Ocean Region, which also demands of India both hardware and software capacities, including diplomatic. He concludes that the effect of such an approach would be stabilising, consonant with the civilisational vision of the founders of the modern Indian nation.

This book presents an alternative roadmap for a world characterised by geopolitical uncertainty. The surging expectations about a future world of democratic values and high economic growth, born out of superpower bonhomie at the end of the Cold War, did not lead to the promised outcomes. Instead we are faced with deeply destabilising challenges, like climate change, widespread state fragility, terrorism, arms race, disruptive newer technologies, global economic volatility, and ineffectiveness of multilateral institutions, old and new. The volume: surveys the intellectual discourse, the attempts to redesign the global institutions, and the geopolitical trends since the end of the Cold War for an understanding of the contemporary geopolitics, analyses the characteristics of the contemporary geopolitics, the seeming intractability of the global challenges, and the ongoing discourse about preventing their further deterioration, foregrounds the Gandhian praxis and IR theory for managing power transitions anchored in non-violent mobilisation of empowered masses, ensuring institutional resilience, and illustrates them through ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, outlines an approach, based on the Gandhian experience of managing political change, towards conflict, geopolitical uncertainties, and institutional ineffectiveness for securing a better future globally, including South Asia. Accessibly written, this volume will be indispensable for foreign policy experts, government think tanks, and career bureaucrats. It will also be essential for scholars and researchers of international relations, foreign policy, politics, and governance and public policy.

This book presents an alternative roadmap for a world characterised by geopolitical uncertainty. The surging expectations about a future world of democratic values and high economic growth, born out of superpower bonhomie at the end of the Cold War, did not lead to the promised outcomes. Instead we are faced with deeply destabilising challenges, like climate change, widespread state fragility, terrorism, arms race, disruptive newer technologies, global economic volatility, and ineffectiveness of multilateral institutions, old and new. The volume: surveys the intellectual discourse, the attempts to redesign the global institutions, and the geopolitical trends since the end of the Cold War for an understanding of the contemporary geopolitics, analyses the characteristics of the contemporary geopolitics, the seeming intractability of the global challenges, and the ongoing discourse about preventing their further deterioration, foregrounds the Gandhian praxis and IR theory for managing power transitions anchored in non-violent mobilisation of empowered masses, ensuring institutional resilience, and illustrates them through ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, outlines an approach, based on the Gandhian experience of managing political change, towards conflict, geopolitical uncertainties, and institutional ineffectiveness for securing a better future globally, including South Asia. Accessibly written, this volume will be indispensable for foreign policy experts, government think tanks, and career bureaucrats. It will also be essential for scholars and researchers of international relations, foreign policy, politics, and governance and public policy.

Presents easy-to-read chapters Information is presented in a very accessible and logical format Identifies and explores biotechnological approaches for environmental protection Encompasses biodegradation of hazardous contaminants, biotechnology in waste management, nanotechnology and issues in environmental biotechnology research