India should embrace digital technologies to achieve the target of becoming a global manufacturing hub.

NEW DELHI: Amidst the aggressive behaviour of China, ASEAN nations want India to take and play leadership role in improving commerce, connectivity and security in the region.

First official visit to Jewish state by an Indian PM puts seal on warming relationship.

As China encircles India with its Belt and Road initiative (BRI) — the 2013 rebranding of a longer-standing project to put China at the heart of a new pan-Eurasian economic order — India has a continent-crossing plan of its own. It’s called the North-South Transport Corridor (NSTC), and it aims to better link India in with Iran, Russia, the Caucasus, and Central Asia.

UNITED NATIONS: India's population could surpass that of China's around 2024, two years later than previously estimated, and is projected to touch 1.5 billion in 2030, according to a UN forecast.

India has stayed away from the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) summit which began in Beijing on Sunday, citing sovereignty, procedural and leadership issues. As many as 120 countries, including 29 at the top leadership level, attended the inaugural, underlining President Xi Jinping’s description of this being the “project of the century.”

NEW DELHI: Away from the arc lights that accompany China's OBOR project, India has been quietly working on creating connectivity grids in its neighbourhood and moving beyond physical connectivity to energy as a tool of connectivity. From Indonesia to Mauritius, India is working on a web of energy relationships that seeks to leverage India's position as a big source of petroleum products, sharing of technology and building inter-dependencies. "We are trying to use energy as a means of diplomacy in a very different way, not only to find overseas sources of hydrocarbons," Dharmendra Pradhan, energy minister said to TOI.

They could build the first of multiple middle power coalitions for regional resilience in Trump’s world.