The book traces the history of Indus basin from Alexander’s campaign to Muhammad bin Qasim crossing the Indus River and laying the foundation of Muslim rule in India. It follows up providing the Mughal rulers perspective on hydrology and water use, and the British ‘Great Game’ on the Indus basin up to the partition of Indian subcontinent in 1947 and finally the signing of Indus Waters Treaty in 1960.

On 20th August 2021, the Vivekananda International Foundation (VIF) organized a talk by Shri V. Srinivas, Additional Secretary to Government of India, the DAPRG and Director General, National Centre for Good Governance on Administrative Reforms: Challenges and Opportunities. Dr Arvind Gupta, Director VIF, welcomed Shri V. Srinivas and delivered his opening remarks. He stressed on the need for administrative reforms, their implementation and the requirement of a new governance module in India. He also recalled Sardar Patel’s efforts that laid the foundation of robust governance.

COVID-19 has exposed the serious strategic implications of India’s import dependence, especially on China. Politics, Policy and Pandemic are the challenges to Prime Minister Modi’s vision of Atmanirbharta (self-reliance). While the initiative is essential to promote capacity building and competitiveness on a local and global scale, among the issues that still need to be looked into are cost of logistics, bureaucratic hurdles and comparatively higher taxes in some sectors that discourage investments.

The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 is a milestone document in the context of nation-building. Vivekananda International Foundation (VIF), a forerunner in policy planning for nation building has thus planned to take up issues arising out of the NEP-2020 which have a rather long-term bearing on the country’s development.