THE NEW

Describing South Asia as a global growth hotspot, the World Bank has said India's GDP growth will remain strong at 7.6 percent in 2016 and 7.7 percent in 2017. "In India, GDP growth will remain strong at 7.6 percent in 2016 and 7.7 percent in 2017, supported by expectations of a rebound in agriculture, civil service pay reforms supporting consumption, increasingly positive contributions from exports and a recovery of private investment in the medium term," the World Bank said in its latest report on South Asia Economic Focus released yesterday. "However, India faces the challenge of further accelerating the responsiveness of poverty reduction to growth, promoting inclusion, and extending gains to a broader range of human development outcomes related to health, nutrition, education and gender," said the biannual report. According to the report, South Asia remains a global growth hotspot and has proven resilient to external headwinds such as China's sl...

A Himalayan balancing act     The great Himalayan Divide between India and China was in evidence last week following the  >  Chinese refusal to support India's case  for entry into the  > Nuclear Suppliers Group . While non-entry into the Group is not the end of the world, for India lives to fight another day, of concern is what the Chinese stance implies for the bilateral relationship between the two Asian giants. This is a relationship that has been assiduously tended over the years since the mid-seventies when ambassadorial relations between the two countries were restored at the initiative of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Despite the humiliation suffered in 1962, she famously opined that “we cannot march to Peking” and that normalisation of relations constituted the triumph of maturity over the futility of alienation. Transformation in the 1980s Cut to summertime, the year being 1986. An Indian border patrol on its way to re-establish ...