Bilateral diplomacy (BD) is a basic building block of international relations. Even in regional and in much of multilateral diplomacy, it is the relationships between pairs of countries that often determine outcomes. One of my early books was 'Bilateral Diplomacy' -- a textbook that grew out of the very first course of lectures I developed at DiploFoundation. That book has been translated into Chinese by Peking University Press.

That textbook prompted the Canadian Foreign Service Institute in 2005 to commission me to develop a 'self-learning' distance course on this same subject; it forms part of their virtual campus offering. In 2008 a course under the same title was developed by a team that I joined, for the British Foreign Office.

A few weeks back I wrote an article that was published in 'Business Standard' of 25 December 2010, suggesting ways in which India might do more to develop its key bilateral relationships. This article is at: http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/kishan-s-rana-beyond-diplomacy-101/419479/

BD remains a relatively under-explored subject, one that does not seem to have attracted sufficient notice from scholars. Of course, practitioners work at it, but perhaps do not write enough on it, or put to pen their direct experiences. Any thoughts on this?