Bandung 55 comes to age!!

SHYAM SARAN, fellow at the Center for Policy Research and former Indian Foreign Secretary, calls upon India to make relations with Indonesia, a G-20 power and neighbor, the centrepiece of its Look East policy pointing to commonalities such as plural, diverse, secular democratic polity, cultural affinities buffeted by religious extremism. In an article in Business Standard, "Rising Indonesia", he states that it was incumbent upon India to upgrade its economic and security partnership with Indonesia beyond the current joint maritime patrols to grow naval capabilities and shape an open, inclusive and loosely structured security architecture in Asia.
 

The elephant and the kangaroo

BRAHMA CHELLANEY of the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi calls for a close India-Australia strategic relationship, given the common security interests in several spheres that bind the two democracies and contrasts it with the reality of the drift in their ties in the recent past. In a Japan Times article "Asia's new strategic partners", he states that the new security agreement will help add concrete strategic content to the relationship and lead to increasing policy coordination on Asian and international affairs