Tag: #G20

ROLE OF INDIA IN QUAD

BY DAKSHITA NAITHANI

The Quadrilateral Dialogue was established in 2007 when four countries—the United States, India, Japan, and Australia—joined forces. However, it did not take off at first due to a variety of factors, and it was resurrected in 2017 after almost a decade due to factors such as growing country convergence, the expanding importance of the Indo-Pacific area, and rising threat sentiments toward China, among others.

Since then it has evolved into a platform for diplomatic discussion and coordination among participating countries, who meet on a regular basis at the working- and ministerial levels to discuss shared interests like ensuring a rules-based international order.

SIGNIFICANCE FOR INDIA

The Quad, ASEAN, and the Western Indian Ocean are the three groupings in which India participates as a partner in the Indo-Pacific area.

India as a Net Security provider

In the region of Indian Ocean India must be a Net Security Provider. Its supremacy in the IOR must be maintained and sustained if it is to claim this position as a Region. QUAD offers India with a platform to strengthen regional security through collaboration while also emphasising that the Indo-Pacific concept stands for a free, open, and inclusive area.( Inclusive here refers to a geographical notion that encompasses all countries inside it as well as those having a stake outside of it)

Countering China

The Quad offers India with a forum to seek collaboration with like-minded countries on a variety of problems, including maintaining territorial integrity and sovereignty, as well as peaceful dispute settlement. It also shows a united front against China’s unceremonious and aggressive actions towards the nation which is especially important now, since ties between India and China have deteriorated as a result of border intrusions along the Tibet-India boundary in many locations. The Chinese policy of encircling India with the String of Pearls poses a direct threat to India’s maritime sovereignty, which must be addressed.

Framing post-COVID-19 international order

QUAD can assist India in not just recovering from the pandemic’s impacts through a series of integrated measures, but also in securing a part in the modern international order. Enhancing such cooperation was one of the first actions made in 2021. The vaccination initiative will serve as a good litmus test for the QUAD administrations’ ability to work together.

Convergence on other issues

On a range of topics, India shares common interests with other Quad members, including connectivity and infrastructure development, security, especially counter-terrorism; cyber and maritime security; multilateral institutions reform, and so on. Assistance from members on these problems might help India achieve its strategic and economic objectives.

Supplementing India’s defence capabilities

Assistance in the sphere of defence among Quad countries, such as joint patrols, strategic information exchange, and so on, can help India overcome its disadvantages in terms of naval capabilities, military reconnaissance, technology, and surveillance systems.

Ensuring a free Indo Pacific

The Indo-Pacific region must be accessible and vibrant, regulated by international norms and bedrock values such as freedom of navigation and peaceful resolution of conflicts, and the nations involved must have the right to make decisions, free of coercion.

Counter-terrorism Table top Exercise for QUAD nations to improve collaboration and common capabilities in dealing with potential terrorist threats, as well as examine CT response systems.

INDIA’S ROLE IN THE INDO-PACIFIC

In the Indo-Pacific, India’s geographic and geopolitical importance provides a counterbalance to China’s rising influence in the Indian Ocean. India’s security concerns, centred primarily on China’s encirclement policy through port facilities in India’s neighbourhood mainly Gwadar and Hambantota and the desire to maintain and protect open and free sea lanes of information exchange against concerns about China’s chokepoint in the South China Sea and increasing maritime presence in the ocean

India’s critical significance in the Indo-Pacific may be seen as a multiple framework. First, unlike the Asia-Pacific architecture, the Indo-Pacific architecture allows New Delhi to move above its long-held standing as a middle-power. This is bolstered by India’s admission to the League of big powers especially the United States and Japan and the development of tight strategic ties with Washington and its regional allies. This promotes India’s great-power ambitions and force projection capability inside the Indo-Pacific and beyond.

Second, India’s Act East Policy and Extended Neighbourhood Policy benefit from New Delhi’s strong participation in the Indo-Pacific. New Delhi’s stronger relations with ASEAN members have also bolstered this boost.

Third, the development of India-US strategic relations, particularly in military, works as a significant counterweight to India’s adversaries. Increased engagements between New Delhi and Washington are exemplified by the four foundational contracts signed between the two countries, which include the General Security of Military Information Agreement, Logistics Exchange Memorandum of Agreement, Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement, and Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement—all of which promote in-depth partnership Most significantly, the improved partnership boosts India’s military capacity, particularly when it comes to striking targets with precise accuracy.

Fourth, under India-Australia ties, which were elevated to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership in 2020, India’s strategic position is bolstered yet further. In fact, Canberra and New Delhi inked nine agreements, the most important of which are the Australia-India Mutual Logistics Support Arrangement and the Defence Science and Technology Implementing Arrangement, both of which provide a framework for the two nations’ security cooperation.

Fifth, and most significantly, during COVID-19, India demonstrated its ability to be a first responder to a regional disaster by giving medical assistance to its near neighbours, including the Maldives, Sri Lanka, and Seychelles. In addition, India sent medical quick response teams to Comoros and Kuwait to help them prepare for the epidemic. In addition, nine Maldivians were evacuated from Wuhan, China, the site of the pandemic.

In addition, India pushed for virtual summits like the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation web conference on March 2020 and the “Extraordinary Digital G20 Leaders’ Summit” to help develop a worldwide reaction to the epidemic on 26 March 2020. In addition, New Delhi established a SAARC Emergency Response Fund for Coronavirus, with India contributing an initial 10 million USD.

In addition, as countries attempt to move manufacturing away from China, India is viewed as one of the world’s new “favoured” investment destinations. The enormous scale of India’s marketplace as well as the low labour costs, make it a desirable destination. Apple, for example, created a production facility in India in partnership with Foxconn, while Samsung, of South Korea, ceased operations in China and moved manufacturing units to India.

There is little dispute about India’s rising position in the Indo-Pacific, not just as a significant participant but also as a responsible actor.  As a result, India’s manoeuvring room in the post-COVID international order is anticipated to expand, as India is seen as one of the major movers in guiding policy and protecting allied interests in the Indo-Pacific. COVID-19 has, in fact, expanded the Quad framework, allowing important parties to play a more active role in addressing critical conventional and unconventional regional issues.

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What Is the Best Time to Post a Blog and How to Test it?

Are you wondering when should you publish blog posts? Do you want to hit that sweet spot where you get the most traffic, social shares, and comments?

If you’ve just written a great blog post and want it to go viral, then publishing time can play an important role.

In this article, we’ll show you what is the best time to post a blog by going through key facts. We’ll also show you how you can test the best time to take your blogs live.

Let’s kick things off with a look at…

Best Time of Day to Post a Blog for More Pageviews

As you start blogging, you’ll have many questions like what time of day should you publish a post. Or which days are best for getting the most traffic.

To answers such queries, different studies have been done where agencies and websites have gone through tons of data.

And among them is a study conducted by Shareaholic in 2011 that shows the best time to publish a blog post is early morning between 7 AM to 1 PM EST on weekdays.

The peak is between 9 AM and 10 AM, which shows when you can schedule or publish your posts.

Building upon the same point,

shows that 70% of users read blogs in the morning (during the AM hours).

&It makes sense as people starting their day would be going through emails, planning their week, and reading up on the latest news.

That said, people do read blogs throughout the day, so you can publish posts in the later hours as well. Now let’s see which days you should take your blogs live.

Best Days to Publish a Blog Post for Traffic

Along with time, different studies show that posting blogs on certain days can help generate more traffic. And which days are we talking about?

Shareaholic suggested that the best day to post a blog is Monday if you want more pageviews. Similarly, Kissmetrics also says that Monday is the best to publish a post and generate traffic.

What’s the Best Time to Post a Blog for Social Shares?

When it comes to engaging people on social media, you’d want to push your blog post when your users are active.

And to give you an idea of what’s the best day for getting social shares, consider a study by TrackMaven. They analyzed 65,000+ blogs and suggested that blogs published on a Sunday get

A possible reason for this could be that on the weekend’s people have more time to read through your content and then come up with a reply.

So, if you have a topic that wants user opinion or start a conversation, then this is the best time to post a blog.

But what if these times don’t work for your website? How can you find the best publishing day and hour for your content pieces? Let’s find out.

How to Test the Best Time to Post a Blog?

The researches we’ve shown you in our article provide a benchmark but in reality, there’s no best time to publish blogs.

That’s because these studies use their own samples of websites to provide a generalized conclusion. And most of them are very old, going back to 2011.

A better way to find the best time to post a blog is by doing your own testing. By monitoring which days and time you get most visitors and engagement, you’ll know the optimal time of publishing.

And the best tool to help you out is MonsterInsights. It’s the leading WordPress plugin for Google Analytics and makes decision making easy by providing insights about your site’s performance with detailed reports inside your dashboard.

MonsterInsights makes it super easy to set up custom dimensions on your website and start tracking custom data of your choice in Google Analytics.

With the help of its Custom Dimensions Addon, you can exactly see what’s the best time to post a blog. Not only that, you can set up custom tracking of individual authors, post types, category and more.

You can follow our complete guide to custom dimensions in Google Analytics for configuring tracking of best publishing times.

Have you ever heard of G20?

     The G20 (or the group of Twenty) is an informal group of 19 countries and the European Union. A combination of the world’s largest advanced and emerging economies. The G20 members are Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, The U.K, the U.S, and the European Union. The G20 economies together account for nearly 80% of the world’s economic output, two-thirds of the global population, and about half of the world’s land area.

     G20 forum regularly meets to coordinate global policy on economic growth, international trade, health, climate, and other issues. The G20 summit is focused on several key issues such as achieving global economic stability, sustainable growth, prevention of future financial crises, putting in place regulatory mechanisms and action against climate change. The two-day summit concludes with a joint statement issued by the members committing themselves to action. It is significant to note that the resolutions of the G20 are not legally binding, but they do influence the policies of the member countries.

     The G20 was established in December 1999 in response to financial crises faced by a number of countries in the 1990s with the aim of uniting the world around promoting global financial stability. There was also the need to create a more inclusive body with greater representation. What began as a regular forum for finance ministers and central bank governors turned into a key summit in 2008 when the heads of state and government came together for the first time in Washington to discuss the global economy as well as other challenges facing the world. Ever since the leaders have been meeting annually. A series of G20 ministerial events take place during a year.

     Saudi Arabia hosted last year’s G20 summit in Riyadh on November 22 and 23. With the global economy experiencing a sharp contraction in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the G20 leaders have vowed to ensure affordable and equitable access to COVID-19 diagnostics and vaccines around the world. They said they are taking immediate measures to address the health, social and economic impacts arising from the pandemic. A G20 Leader’s Declaration issued at the end of the summit called for coordinated global action, solidarity, and multilateral cooperation to overcome the current challenges and realise opportunities of the 21st Century for all by empowering people, safeguarding the planet, and shaping new frontiers. Italy will host the summit of the high-profile grouping in 2021, Indonesia in 2022, India in 2023, and Brazil in 2024.

  The G20, 2021:  

     The G20, bringing together much of the world’s population and the global economy, must live up to its role. This is why the 2021 G20, under the Italian Presidency, will focus on three broad, interconnected pillars of action: People, Planet, Prosperity.

Within these pillars, they are taking the lead in ensuring a swift international response to the pandemic – able to provide equitable, worldwide access to diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines – while building up resilience to future health-related shocks.

They are also looking beyond the crisis, towards ensuring a rapid recovery that addresses people’s needs. This implies a focus on reducing inequalities, on women’s empowerment, on the younger generations, and on protecting the most vulnerable. It means promoting the creation of new jobs, social protection, and food security.

The G20 is also intent on paving the way to rebuilding differently in the aftermath of the crisis. More efficiently, through better use of renewable energies and with a firm commitment to protecting our climate and our common environment.

This is a prerequisite for our sustained prosperity. A prosperous future, however, also requires that we properly harness the main drivers of growth and innovation. They are working to bridge the digital divide and make digitalization an opportunity for all, improve productivity and – in short –leave no one behind.