India World Forum

The origin of the Indian Foreign Service can be traced back to the British rule when the Foreign Department was created to conduct business with the “Foreign European Powers”. In fact it was on September 13, 1783, when the Board of Directors of the East India Company passed a resolution at Fort William, Calcutta (now Kolkata), to create a department, which could help “relieve the pressure” on the Warren Hastings administration in conducting its “secret and political business”. Subsequently known as the “Indian Foreign Department”, it went ahead with the expansion of diplomatic representation, wherever necessary, to protect British interests. In 1843, Governor-General Ellenborough carried out administrative reforms under which the Secretariat of the Government was organized under four departments – Foreign, Home, Finance and Military. Each was headed by a Secretary level officer. The foreign department Secretary was entrusted with the “conduct of all correspondence bel...

India America relations have seen a remarkable transformation over the last decade. There is a broad political consensus across the political spectrum in both the countries to strengthen the India-America relations. The transformation of our bilateral relationship began with President Bill Clinton’s visit to India in March 2000. The process continued through President Bush’s tenure with the summit meetings in July 2005 in Washington D.C. and in March 2006 in New Delhi. The India America relation s have further strengthened and the scope of our engagement has become more broad based under President Obama, who has characterized India-America relationship as one of the defining partnerships of 21st century. The visit of Prime Minister to Washington from November 22-26, 2009 as the first State Guest of President Barack Obama reaffirmed the global strategic partnership between India and the United States. President Obama’s recent visit to India (Mumbai and Delhi) from November 6-9, 201...

Affiliations such as nationality are not only matters of entitlement, they all also involve attachment and responsibility. In a rapidly changing country, as India certainly i s, one of the duties that we have as Indians is to ask: what kind of a country this i s . This may lead to the further question: what does it demand of us, at this time? I am very aware that it is rather reckless to ask grand questions of such apparent naivety. But since I don't indulge in other dangerous activities, like taming lions, or being on the trapeze, or standing for parliamentary elections, perhaps I ought to show some bravery and foolhardiness here. Hence this lecture. Amartya Sen on Indian History , Indian Culture ,  Indian Politics and Indian Economy India is of course a large country, with a huge population. The relative size of the Indian population is not a new phenomenon, contrary to the presumption, which seems fairly common in the world today, that India has become relatively enormo...

It is proposed to study the impact of Economic Reforms on women working in un-organized sector of the selected districts in the state of Maharashtra. We have already discussed in the previous Post , the objectives, scope and methodology of economic reforms in India.Therefore, in the light of the objectives and hypotheses, we shall discuss in detail, the findings of this study. The district wise coverage of the sample districts, blocks, villages, as well as the number of sample entrepreneurs and women workers. We have selected for this study i] Beed ii] Ratnagiri districts as underdeveloped districts, of which Beed district belongs to the Marathwada Region, while Ratnagiri district belongs to the Kokan Region of Maharashtra State. Both of these districts have a low Human Development Index. On the other we have selected i] Nagpur and ii] Kolhapur, as developed districts, for comparison. They have a higher Human Development Index. Similarly, as a second stage, 2 blocks each from of ...