A heavy list of honors follows the name of Lord Swraj Paul, the Jalandhar born UK based business magnate and philanthropist. But the septugenarian, after handing over change of his expanidng Caparo Group of comapies to his sons, is now focussed on his pet project - the progress of India.

India carried out a series of anti-ballistic missile tests re-cently starting with an exo-atmospheric anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system test on November 12. This was followed by an endo-atmospheric test of a Prithvi missile defense system on December 1 from Wheeler Island near Balasore in Orrisa.

A fisherman going to the sea at dawn is plagued by thoughts of what would be the weather like. He has to constantly be on the "sea-god's" mercy to get his daily resource to feed his family. But this has changed in the last few years. M.S. Swaminathan, one of India's best-known scientists, chose village Veerampattinam for a pilot project.

The political crisis in Myanmar has topped the agenda at talks between leaders of the Southeast Asian nations and the European Union meeting in Singapore. The group, meeting for an annual summit, renewed international calls for the military junta to release pro-democracy prisoners but set no deadline for action.

The name, Sam Pitroda is symbolic of the yellow phone booths all across India. Yes, it was mainly because of the efforts of this inventor, technocrat, and social thinker that telecom revolution started in India.

President Hamid Karzai recently called upon Taliban leaders Mullah Omar and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar to consider the prospect of peace talks with the Afghan Government. Will this strategy work? Can there be an understanding with the Taliban culminating in an early peace?

Jacqueline aka "Jackie" is a pardesi who is more desi than me and many of us here. Someone who has been staying with Indian families since she first stepped on the Sub-continent, she knows the dynamics of Indian culture very well. She says, "I find India very interesting".

The SIPRI Yearbook 2007 is a reminder of our world getting increasingly militarized, reminiscent of the Cold War era. This is evident from the continuous rise in military expenditure, which reached a whopping US$1,204 billion in 2006, raising some basic questions about the causes and consequences of this increasing expenditure, and its implications for India.

Judy Frater, a student from Pennsylvania came to India in 90s as part of the Dastakar Project in Kutch, Gujarat. She was intrigued as well as mesmerized by the embroideries of Kutch. And her association with craftsmen from Kutch was accidental and a result of series of events.