Comment & Briefs

There are also grey areas to the extent that the professional and hierarchical relationship which the Consultants will have with regular IFS officers is yet to be clearly outlined.

East and Southeast Asia are known to get affected by various diseases routinely. Particularly, various waterborne and other diseases likely malaria and dengue fever commonly affect the regions. There is a concern that global warming may translate into explosive growth of mosquito-borne diseases. In addition to this, growing number of natural disasters are found escalating the health related challenges. All this eventually poses a threat to health, economic and human security.

While the attack on the chemical warehouse in France and the accident in the Taiwanese park are not cases of chemical terrorism in a classical sense, they can be analysed against the backdrop of a ‘chemical incident’.

Do the successors of Monnet have the moral strength to move in the right direction rather than act like petty minded accountants who want to balance the books at any cost?

If the experience of the Afghan–trained mujahids is anything to go by, the threat posed by returnees from Syria and Iraq has the potential to be far more lethal especially since the numbers involved are much higher.

In China’s foreign policy setting, the logic of ‘sovereignty’ and ‘history’ are employed or applied selectively as is evident from its reservation on India’s oil exploration in the South China Sea and its own plans to implement the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor through Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir despite India’s reservations.

While the Indonesian military played a crucial role in counter-terrorism since the late 1940s, the fall of Suharto in 1998 and democratisation led to the Police dominating this task, especially after the first Bali bombings in 2002. Lately, however, the Indonesian military has reclaimed part of this role, mainly due to the rising threat from the Islamic State.

Modi’s activism is welcomed in Central Asian countries, though they know that India has already missed the bus and it has a lot of catching up to do.

Time and again, civilian masses the world over have been at the receiving end of legions of conventional weapons systems leaving destructive direct and indirect consequences in their wake. The copious arms -and their ammunition- currently in circulation range from assault rifles, rocket launchers, anti-aircraft weapons to pistols, machine guns as well as missiles, grenades and other explosive ordnances.

Converting the Services` HQs as departments of the government within the scope of Allocation of Business Rules, with responsibility to Parliament for obtaining defence appropriations, may be in the long-term interests of the country.