Over the past ten years since 9/11, event after event in and outside Afghanistan has overshadowed the need to connect with the Afghan people and to deliver on their basic expectations for peace, justice, and prosperity. Even though NATO member-states increasingly appreciate the importance of public diplomacy at home and abroad, they have largely faltered to engage and listen to the Afghan people on how to secure Afghanistan.

What is Gov 2.0? Gov 2.0 is all about a new culture of open governance, greater citizen involvement through the judicious use of web 2.0. Gov 2.0 is about interactive democracy against representative democracy, it is about open administration that involves citizens participation against closed administration and it is about spirit of voluntarily sharing information against closely guarding it.

APDS Blogger: Mark Preston

India is an ancient civilization with five thousand years of recorded history. Over these long years Indians have perfected many cultural attributes that may be appealing to the rest of the world - what Joseph Nye likes to call 'soft power’. Some good examples of Indian soft power are Yoga, Bollywood, Ayurveda and the great Indian cuisine (including curry and chicken tikka).

India is fast becoming Asia's art and literary hub. India Art Summit and Jaipur Literary Festival are two significant art and literary events that took place back to back this January in India's capital Delhi and Jaipur respectively. Jaipur, also known as the Pink City, is located 281 kilometers from the national capital Delhi in the Western India state of Rajasthan.

When a nation is busy devouring itself, in a manner that threatens the larger global peace, other nations' policies and public diplomacy will be complicated indeed.

In the case of a disintegrating Pakistan, American policy has tended to make effective public diplomacy virtually impossible and irrelevant.