Amid all their stress and tension over the Chinese entanglements up in the Himalayas, the wise mandarins of the South Block seem to have been napping even as the Dragon waded through the Palk Strait off Tamil Nadu. Not that the huge beast, while gobbling up one little nation after another in pursuit of its long-drawn expansionist stratagem, has crept close to the south Indian coast quietly through a new moon night. The howls warning of the Chinese debt-trap consuming Sri Lanka and the impending security threat to not just India but also to the entire Indian Ocean Region (IOR) were heard across continents. Read more…