It should not in the least modify admiration for the virtuoso Anna Tanvir, who gloriously sings and plays traditional music from Ireland, Scotland, Madagascar, India and France creating a musical biography.

Shared histories, similar cultures and aspirations link India and Africa together. Launched in 2011, 'INDIAFRICA : A Shared Future' is a people-to-people initiative between India and the African continent.

Stepping up its diplomatic footprints in energy-rich Central Asia, India is set to replicate the success of the Pan Africa e-network by creating a similar project of tele-education and tele-medicine that will span all the states of the strategically important region.

India and Bangladesh share 54 rivers between them. Despite setting up a Joint River Commission for water management as early as 1972, tensions between the countries on how to share resources recently came to a head in a dispute over the Teesta River. At stake are the lives of countless people from West Bengal and Bangladesh who depend upon the river for survival.

It is time somebody blew the whistle on the crippling affliction of severe understaffing in the ministry of external affairs (MEA). India is served by the smallest diplomatic corps of any major country, not just far smaller than the big powers but by comparison with most of the larger emerging countries.

Four Indian naval ships scheduled to visit Shanghai on a rare goodwill visit next week, first since 2006, will receive "high-profile" reception, China said today. As External Affairs Minister S M Krishna spoke of the goodwill tour of the naval ships to Shanghai during his meeting with his Chinese counterpart Yang Jeichi here today, the Chinese Minister told him that a high-profile reception awaited them.

India faces a choice: be a cog in the wheel of the US’ Asia-Pacific strategy or be a wheel by itself with a dynamics of its own. The choice is going to be rather easy for the Indian policymakers to make.

Is this “superpower” model going against the very fundamentals of India’s “soft power”? Three characteristics distinguish India: a 5,000-year-old extant, unbroken, well-documented, civilisational, cultural heritage; an overwhelming population of no less than 1.2 billion; and a living laboratory for pluralistic development without a common spoken language.