Archives

Our archives are a repository of original thinking that chronicles two decades of research, analysis, and policy innovation. This collection brings together articles written by SFG’s founders and research analysts between 2005 and 2025, preserving the ideas, and insights that shaped our intellectual journey. These writings reflect the evolution of our thinking as we engaged with some of the world’s most pressing challenges and opportunities.

The archive offers a rich body of material for researchers, policymakers, students, journalists, and anyone interested in understanding complex global issues through a long-term strategic lens. The articles explore a wide spectrum of subjects, including peace and conflict, water diplomacy, international relations, technology, environmental sustainability, governance, security, and the changing dynamics of regional and global cooperation. They also place regional developments within broader international and geopolitical contexts.

Many of these articles anticipated trends and policy challenges that later became central to international discourse. Others document the development of concepts and frameworks that informed SFG’s subsequent research, dialogues, and publications. Together, they provide not only historical context but also enduring perspectives that continue to resonate in a rapidly changing world.

Beyond serving as a research resource, this archive offers a window into the intellectual history of SFG. It traces how our ideas evolved over time, how new policy concepts emerged through sustained inquiry, and how our engagement expanded from regional concerns to global challenges. Readers can follow the progression of our work across changing geopolitical landscapes and appreciate our evidence-based approaches to peace, security, and international cooperation.

Whether you are revisiting landmark analyses, exploring the origins of key policy ideas, or discovering our work for the first time, we hope these archives provide valuable insights, stimulate informed debate, and inspire fresh thinking about the future.

The Final Frontier

China's sky-high space ambitions have the potential to upset the current world order. Within the coming decade, China may become capable of challenging America's dominance over space and its monopoly over global navigational systems.
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Trends in Indian Innovation

  • By Sanaa Arora
In the beginning of 2010, the Indian Government formally declared 2010 2020 as the Decade of Innovation. There is a multitude of activity, both happening as well as planned, in the innovation sphere in India, in which certain salient features stand out and are worth examining. These features may well determine the degree of success India achieves in the next few decades in realizing its goal of becoming one of the leading knowledge economies in the world.
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India’s Accession into the SCO

  • By Gitanjali Bakshi
On June 12th 2010 the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) opened its doors to India, offering the country permanent membership into one of the world's newest strategic blocs. India, after enjoying observer status at the SCO for years, is now eligible for a seat at the table with some of the most powerful countries in the eastern hemisphere. This opportunity could propel Asia's crouching tiger into a position of considerable influence but it would also force it out of an age-old, tried and tested policy of non-alignment.
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Full Speed Ahead: Transport System in the Middle East

  • By Shivangi Muttoo
Road and rail infrastructure in the Middle East is rapidly improving with new modes of public transport such as the metro, monorail, light rail transit (LRT), bus rapid transit (BRT) being introduced across urban centres in the region. By 2017, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) will have a railway network connecting all the member countries. Modernizing the transport infrastructure has the potential to bring environmental, economic and social benefits to the region.
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Maharashtra: A Sorry “State” of Affairs

  • By Anumita Raj
As with any part of India, Maharashtra is a study in contradictions. The financial capital of the one of the fast growing economies in the world is in the state, as is one of the highest rates of farmer suicides that India has ever known. The juxtaposition of the excesses of Bollywood along side one of the world's largest slums dwelling in Dharavi is oft-mentioned. In fact, for decades, writers and filmmakers have explored the dichotomy that exists in the city of Mumbai, and by extension the state of Maharashtra. What will Maharashtra look like in 10 or 15 years? How will Mumbai accommodate all of the estimated nearly 29 million people that are expected to live in the Greater Mumbai Area by 2025? These are questions that worry the policymakers and the citizens of the state.
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Sustainable Waste Management in Bangladesh

  • By Sowmya Suryanarayanan
The rising urban population has been changing the nature of solid waste management in Bangladesh from mainly a localised issue to a more distinct and persistent social problem. Despite the growing extent of this problem, the sector continues to remain one of the most disorganised areas of urban development in Bangladesh. An estimated 47000 tons of solid waste per day will be generated in urban areas by 2025, which is almost three and half times more than the current generation. Effective solid waste management has the potential not only to reduce the amount of waste generated in the country but also create employment opportunities for the urban poor.
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