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Article: Normalising India.(India's future)(Brief Article)
- Article from:
- The Economist (US)
- Article date:
- September 4, 1999
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 Economist Newspaper Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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FOR a country with a billion people and a nuclear bomb, India does not count for much in the world. Its trade accounts for a scant 0.7% of the world total; it gets about one-tenth the foreign direct investment that China attracts. It has no permanent seat on the UN Security Council. When pundits talk about the geo-strategic chessboard of the future, India has figured more often as a bishop or a knight than as a queen. On this view, India is the world's biggest under-achiever.
There are many ways to count for something, not all them constructive-- think of over-achieving Iraq and North Korea. But the sort of influence India aspires to is more positive. It would ...