Book on aviation and foreign policy by Dr Sanat Kaul released
Team L&M
A book titled Aviation & Foreign Policy : Convergence by Dr Sanat Kaul was launched at Roseate Hotel, Aerocity, New Delhi recently. Over 40 eminent persons consisting of Indian and foreign diplomats, retired military officers, civil aviation officers and tourism experts attended the launch hosted by Roseate Hotel, Aerocity, New Delhi in collaboration with International Foundation for Aviation, Aerospace and Drones( IFFAAD) and KW publishers.
The book dwells on an unusual topic of relationship or lack of it between Aviation policy and Foreign policy touching the regional areas around India. It advocates the need for connectivity to these areas with and includes incentives and even subsidy( where possible) on lines of the domestic UDAN. It also discusses the fast growing India outbound traffic and how to incentivise and divert it to locations of our political advantage. It further discusses how China is using its huge outbound passenger traffic as a part of its foreign policy to reward and punish countries, something India cannot easily do. It also analyses the shortfalls of our Aviation policy and how Indian Airlines got disadvantaged in international coverage. Finally, the book points out the lacuna in its Act East policy by missing out on the soft power of Andaman and Nicobar Islands and why India should not leverage the advantage by allowing international flights for only high-value low-volume tourism as has been approved by the Supreme Court.
After the launch ceremony there was a lively panel discussion with former Secretary Ministry of External Affairs and a Columnist KC Singh IFS ( retd), former Secretary Civil Aviation Ministry as well as CMD Air IndiaPradeep Kharola IAS ( retd) and Chief Editor of Destination India magazine Navin Berry who is also the CEO BITB Conclave on various issues raised in the book. The issues of connectivity by air to places where we have foreign policy interests, how to divert our fast growing international outbound and opening Andaman and Nicobar Islands as part of our soft power projection for high value low volume tourism was discussed.
The book is available on Amazon
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