Leaders of the five largest emerging economies will meet July 13-16 to finalize their first joint project: a new international development bank. The countries, known as BRICS (Brazil, Russia,India, China, and South Africa) have spent many years trying to find a common goal. Together they have more than 40 percent of the world’s population. And they share an interest in challenging many of the norms set by the West. Yet each nation is quite different in governance and ambition.

The safe return of 46 Indian nurses from Iraq is the result of astute diplomacy and a calibrated exercise of soft power by multiple agencies of government. While External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj engaged her counterparts at the political level in West Asia, including Foreign Ministers of the six oil-rich monarchies of the Gulf Cooperation Council, sound tactical leadership seemed to have been provided by Foreign Secretary Sujatha Singh and National Security Adviser Ajit Doval. 

The partition of British India followed World War II, and ever since the independent states of India and Pakistan came into existence in 1947, the two countries have had a volatile relationship.  On the tennis court, however, India's Rohan Bopanna and Pakistan's Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi have mended some of the political and sporting divide between their two countries by forming a successful partnership on and off the court.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has permitted Twitter unprecedented access to his administration in a drive to put social media at the heart of government, the US Internet company said.  Modi deployed an army of supporters over Twitter and Facebook during his successful election campaign.

Maharashtra hosted its first Kazakhstan film festival, celebrating the history, culture and evolution of that Central Asian country.  The four-day festival was organized in Pune by the National Film Archives of India (NFAI), Pune International Centre (PIC) and the Indian Council of Cultural Relations.

When Prime Minister Narendra Modi flies to Brazil mid-July, it will be a welcome respite from the heat and cacophony of post-budget Delhi. President Dilma Rousseff's grand welcome to the sixth Brics summit will be energising. The summit's pomp and ceremony will, however, be less important than Modi's 'side meetings', especially with Chinese president Xi Jinping. It will allow him to take measure of the man who has emerged as one of the most powerful and ambitious leaders of modern China.

As Narendra Modi heads to Brazil for the BRICS Summit, Team Niti Central takes a look at India’s Soft Power in Latin America – the incredible popularity of Bollywood. A distant memory of a shared colonial past and a demographic dividend hungry for unbounded economic aspirations are not the only unifying factors between India and Latin America. India’s film industry is hugely popular in the region and has gone places where direct Indian diplomacy is perhaps yet to venture.

"Today I ask our space community to make plans for developing a Saarc satellite, a satellite that provides a full range of applications and services to all our neighbours. There is a lot of poverty in the Saarc nations and we need scientific solutions for this," The Indian Express quotes the PM as saying.