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More than a retreat it gives the US, EU, India, China and the nations in Asia and Africa, Latin America most affected by higher oil prices and lower economic growth a time to pause and rethink dependence on the Gulf region for oil supplies. It is not mentioned in the media yet there has to be a link between the US president's visit to Beijing and Beijing's support for a normalized US China relationship, and offering its support for a settlement. This gives EU, China, India, Japan, and poorer nations in Africa, Asia, such as Pakistan, Turkey, Indonesia and Brazil, some relief from reduced access to oil supplies. US is also planning a supply from Venezuela to India to take pressure off oil supplies in Asia by offering Venezuela as an alternative source. China is in many ways joining the US to bring about a denuclearized Middle East, doing it in a quieter way with Iranian public opinion making a shift to put its economic development ahead of missile development. As the two sides have different interpretations and it is still only a Memorandum of Understanding it is not a situation where the US is sending billions of dollars to support the military in Iran as Obama had done. Attention will shift to the Iranian economy over the next 12 months.  US conveys that it has nothing to gain from wrecking the Iranian economy or nation as the Iranian people if avote were held today would clearly choose putting the economy first by huge margins considering the widespread protests in Iran in 2025 that started this crisis. The US naval blockade was effective and is always an option, with US and partners having greater experience in the situation presented by the narrow straits in Hormuz. Arab partners also acted with restraint and is itself an opportunity for Iran to change direction. China's making cuts of 3 million barrels a day in oil supplies from Hormuz is itself along with acceleration of renewable energy in both China and India is one of the dividends of this crisi. Another is the gradual shift to alternative supplies from other regions of the world so that Hromuz region can no longer dictate oil prices in the world. Accelerating Venezuelan and UAE, US, other oil and gas  supply growth will also put increase supply and renewables reduce  demand growth as a result of the crisis to break the hold on oil prices of the oil cartels of Qatar, and Saudis. As a transition fuel oil can be be kept below $50 a barrel, not at prices at the whims of the princes in the Middle East at the expense of the people of the Arab world from Egypt the most populous and Tunisia, Morocco, to the Muslim nations such as Turkey and Pakistan,Iran itself which bore the brunt of this Hormuz crisis. The US has several priorities including in its relations with oil cartels dominated Mexico that  brings drugs and people across US borders, with other nations in EU and Asia that have benefitted through deindustrialization in the US leaving it poorer across a vast part of America. Advancing objectives in one area such as denuclearization does not mean not addressing priorities at home and in relations with other regions. China shares American interest in denuclearization of the Middle East this should now be put to the test. It is an entirely different situation in 2026 than what weak leaders from Bush to Obama allowed to happen by  wars in the Middle East - the US naval blockades of 2025/2026 are entirely different in cost in terms of men and dollar investment and used to convey America's determination not to waste vital resources of the Nation. The best policy is not to pursue policy for absolute wins but make intelligent choices and in some situations pause to reflect on the best course of action and other ways to reach goals. By getting China and the US as world powers for denuclearization even though this is not vocally said, both gain and both will come up with solutions. ...

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Sharing the waters of the Indus river system means— the ‘Eastern Rivers’, namely Sutlej, Beas and Ravi, for India, and the ‘Western Rivers’ of Indus, Jhelum, and Chenab for Pakistan. Indus Waters Treaty changes proposed by India include bilateral not international arbitration for Indian dam building plans, and using water storage optimally on its side for the western rivers.

The western rivers have four times the water as eastern rivers and dam building technology has evolved over 75 years. The Indus Water Treaty was written by civil engineers but its international arbitration and three levels need to be replaced with bilateral settlement so that India can go ahead with dam building for development without Pakistan simply stalling everything, which serves no purpose for modernization.

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The National Maritime Heritage Complex as a World Heritage Site is shown here in the Indian Express, as prime minister Modi opens  the maritime site of the Indus civilization that existed in India in the period 2500 BC to 1500 BC. It was discovered in 1921 by Sir Hubert Marshall in the region that extends from Gujarat to Sind and the Punjab settled by the Harappan people. The four oldest civilizations are the Mesopatamian, Egyptian, Harappan Indus, and Chinese civilization, which makes this an important part of human history and cultural development.

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This report shows how the H1-B visa system as it operated for many years till 2025 undercut wages of American workers in the computer and software engineering fields. Changes are being made to accomplish the original aims of such a program. More critical is the number of jobs over a span of years that are lost to US born citizens- in just 5 years 300,000 US born talented engineers and the 3 million workers they could train would simply not be there to power America's reindustrialization and re-modernization 2025-2030. The same is true for India as 300,000 India's talented engineers and the 3 million workers they could train would simply not be there to power India's industrialization and modernization 2025-2030. This hurts the modernization of the two of the most important economies of the world to the year 2030, which would be profoundly felt by 2035. As part of many actions taken by both the US and India this could lead to shrinking the development speed and development gap with China for the US and India to 2035. ...

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US Trade Representative Tai and India Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal will meet in New Delhi November 22-23 on Tai's visit to New Delhi, Seoul and Tokyo to strengthen trade and investment ties for Indo-Pacific region. Following Modi's meeting with Biden in Washington DC the discussions with Tai will reconvene the India US Trade Policy Forum in 2021, and push forward with the negotiations for the Investment Incentive Agreement to increase investment in development projects in India. All aspects of investment, trade and industry will be covered as India builds a closer relationship with US in its drive for economic development that also strives to achieve goals for renewable energy.

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Indian Finance Minister Sitharaman gives the following remarks in parliament on the White Paper presented to the 18th Lok Sabha in January 2024, describing the dire condition of the Indian economy by 2013 with mismanagement and "big ticket" corruption. India's Finance Minister Sitharaman describes the situation in three key areas by 2013 that left the economy of India in a fragile state, with projects stalled, development delayed, and capital investment not taking place. She gives as 3 main points of focus- the state of affairs at Defense Ministry, at the Environment Ministry, and for Energy supplies. At the outset she says PM Modi had suggested the need for such White Paper by 2015 so that future generations would know what had happened in India that failed the country at a time when China had already joined the community of developed nations. The issues go back to the coal scandal when coal auctions had to be cancelled by the Supreme Court for irregularities, the misuse of state owned banks leading to a large increase in non performing loans, and the mismanaged Commonwealth Games under government before 2014.  Sitharaman told parliament this had the effect of national security being compromised, Environment as a Ministry becoming a bottleneck, and the leadership failing the country. In the military there was a critical shortage of ammunition and equipment. She cites the Defense Minister at the time having the attitude that independent India has had a policy for many years not to develop the border areas, as an undeveloped border was better than a developed border. She also says Ministry stated that 92% of the Defense Budget was used up and major acquisitions have to wait for the military. Following this Sitharaman cited the scandals of that period and leakages of funds that weakend the country and failed its people. She compared capital expenditures today of 6.22 lakh crores in 2024 thre times the number in 2013 of 2.53 crores. HAL now makes Tejas jets and helicopters in Made in India production. At the Environment Ministry the delays that were 86 days reached a high of 316 days by 2013 for approval of development projects, with 355 projects pending, the nation brought to a standstill with the effects of the coal supplies to thermal power plants being wholly inadequate and Coal India in poor shape. The root of this was said Sitharaman- what everyone in Indian business knew, the term "genteel facts," as the cost of business going up. She cites the changes since then of aiming for Balance and Development- Transparency, Online Green Clearance, Standardized Environment Impact Studies, A new Department of Climate change, International Solar Alliance 2015, Mission Life 2022, Green Hydrogen, Namami Gange, Rooftop Solar. India set ambitious goals at the last Climate change Conference.    ...

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Parmeswaran Iyer's unique background in water and sanitation at the World Bank led to his work as Secretary of Water and Sanitation in the Government of India. At that point he was chosen to head prime minister Modi's campaign for Clean India called Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. It was an effort to provide clean neighborhoods and tackle a problem that had eluded earlier efforts including Gandhiji- open defecation. Iyer was instrumental in making it work by having 90 million toilets built in India.

From that mission he was selected to head India's overall development plan as CEO, NITI Aayog. In a piece in the Times of India Feb 14, Iyer puts forward the  mulltipronged effort for development in India based on ensuring financial strength, controlling inflation, supporting microenterprises, housing, health and education efforts, and technology advancement through digitalization including 5G.

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Hardeep Puri writes in the Indian Express that one of the biggest problems in development in India was that government programs for development just kept getting delayed, and there were leakages of funds that could never be tracked. It is the sign of a developing country that it remain perpetually a developing country when it does not find a way to overcome this situation. Most of Asia, Japan, South Korea, China has found a way out, and it is a sign of character in a country and its administration that real implementation takes place to transform a developing country into a modern country organizing and combining the inputs of land, capital, technology and human resources. Just one example is the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana to build housing in India's cities to promote quality of living. In the last 7 years Puri writes in the Indian Express that 11.2 million houses were sanctioned, 4.9 million built and the rest to be built by March 2022. Compared to 1.2 million in the prior 10 years. To do this investment jumped by about 10 times. In the US infrastructure was neglected in the last 2 decades. In India urban infrastructure was delayed by never ending delays and leakages of funds. Across a range of projects from Metro urban transport to rail, bridges and road, infrastructure was slow and wobbly in India for most of the decades since 1947. The Smart Cities Mission is being financed with an investment planned of Rupees 2 trillion or over $200 billion to change the urban landscape with people centred priorities. As Puri writes silently, non performers are being weeded out, loopholes plugged, targets set, in scrutiny and monitoring of projects all the way to the prime minister in a way that has never happened before. There is relentless focus on monitoring the missions, problems to overcome, targets and dates of completion. Bringing to life a new national character and spirit for India during the pandemic. ...

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The U.S. perception that the shadows from the period of non-alignment in the Nehru era still linger in Indian policy, a sort of ambivalence that has denied India's true potential as an alliance partner for the free world. A perception in the U.S. that has not seen the true potential of the largest population in the world of 1.5 billion people in India and Bangladesh has also colored perception of the relationship. This population is now at a point at which a broad based development is not only possible (sab ka vikas sab ke sath) but also moving at an accelerated pace. With a combination of cumulatively increasing inputs of technology, capital, land and educated labor force this is now at the potential of becoming a very doable world changing event by 2035- a $20 trillion economy by doubling every 5 years based on renewable energy and dedicated to health, education and development. What makes this a world changing event is the opportunity to meet the aspirations of about 2 billion people in India, Bangladesh, Indonesia and surrounding nations, offering new hope for Africa and Latin America. For this the U.S. commitment cannot have any traces of ambivalence, and the Indian commitment cannot have any traces of ambivalence. India needs one more change in its perceptions - to realize that for the first time in its history that this is within its reach. ...

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Modi refers to an ecosystem that continuously shrinks the pool of capital from government revenues, revenues intended to fund development roads, bridges and other infrastructure illegally siphoned away, that stalled and suffocated rapid development in India for 75 years. Without foreign investment there can be no rapid development in India. Without strong and efficient institutions foreign investment has not come to India in the last 30 years in the way it has come to China. These institutions of good governance that prevent such siphoning away of revenues enable 100% of every dollar or rupee of taxes to go into development essential for funding infrastructure, climate infrastructure, logistics and the other inputs of capital, labor, energy and land to build manufacturing capabilities. An ever widening pool of the inputs of capital, labor and land year after year- a process that Japan, then South Korea, then China has accomplished is possible. I It is only now taking place in India. What Mohandas Gandhi, Nehru and Sardar Patel failed to grasp in the 30's, 40's and 50's is that it was possible to have an independent India and still remain a backward undeveloped nation for a staggering period of 75 years or almost half of the period the British ruled India. What Mao failed to grasp in China and which was corrected by other leaders to make China an advanced economy able to fulfill the aspirations of the Chinese people, is also the situation that prevailed in India. Post independence leaders in China and India both isolated their economies, both limited human potential, both let institutions fail in good governance.  It is only now moving India into the process of developing an advanced developed economy by 2040, able to fulfill the aspirations of a youthful population of 1.2 billion people. ...

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Gautam Adani and the development of Mundra as port, special economic zone, and location for power plants with access to coal from Indonesia and Australia. Mundra is located on the westen coast of India, in Gujarat state.

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How India finds and trains its youngest sports athletes is shown in this report from Fatehabad by Andrew Amson. A bricklayer's daughter Pooja set the Indian national record at 1.82 metres in high jump by winning silver at the Asian U-20 Games in South Korea. The amazing thing is that coaches discovered her talent for jumping even though she entered in training for yoga. With limited facilities she trained with bundles of haysticks for the pit to fall on and a bamboo stick to go over. This is also a story of how India is matching the development of sports of its neighbors Japan, China and South Korea by giving young people from every background and income level a chance to compete at the highest level. 

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A question about perceptions of the  of Indian Muslim communities is asked at the Peterson Institute in Washington D.C. Nirmala Sitharaman, India's Finance Minister, responds by comparing the situation where India's Muslim communities have grown from about 10% of the population in 1947 to 15% today compared to Pakistan where Muslim communities were not protected and dwindled from 15% of the population to about 3% today. She did not mention the inclusivity in policy where sab ka vikas sab ke sath is national policy, development for all with the participation of all. And that Muslims benefit equally with other communities in the rapid growth of the economy and GDP in India. This positive story for Muslims and for all communities also stems from the ideals of Vedanta, respect for all religions in Vivekananda's idea including Buddhism, Christianity and Islamic faiths. It also comes from India being rooted in Gandhi's and Vivekananda's ideas since independence. ...

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Larger investments are needed in science and technology development, and in research and development, secondary and higher education, says Naushad Forbes, for India to reach its potential. He says industry has been too timid when it comes to setting goals for design, innovation, and research and development. He calls for a listening society and culture that is open to to outside ideas, continuously makes connections with the outside world, and is keen to apply new ideas learned in the interactions.

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GST is to India what land sales were for China in its phase of rapid development and accelerated growth. It consolidated capital that could be then invested at the national and state levels on infrastructure, logistics for exports growth, creating a virtuous cycle of capital growth that could finance ever widening scale of development projects from metros, subways, rail, roads, bridges, airports, ports, logistics, tech related improvements. This was done in 2017 through a midnight session of parliament that passed the legislation needed. Years of endless discussion were turned into one session of implementing a single major tax system for India, transparent, digitized with new IT  Infosys playing a key role, and providing the pool of capital that has financed 5 years of development to take India past Britain as the fifth largest economy. Its pace of growth over 11% and accelerating with Maharashtra's GST growing at 24% in 2022-2023 over the prior year suggest that this will play a critical role in giving India a large pool of capital for growth. To be supplemented with foreign investment to make New India as a modernized nation. With an economy that will be exceeded only by the US and should catch up to China over the next 10 years. ...

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For the first time since independence in 1947 India gets a Master Plan for infrastructure development in the whole country.  All federal government ministries are pulled together under one roof. Ministries will coordinate their plans for infrastructure development. Specific investments, specific delivery times, real time monitoring will be done through digital technologies under a single master plan. Railways, highways and roads, waterways transport, energy, telecom broadband and other modal connectivity will now be done in one plan with all federal and state ministries pulled into the master plan. This will produce network effects with today's digital technologies as this has never been tried before in the world. Logistics costs of 14% of product cost will be cut by 6% to 8% under the new logistics frameworks set through this plan and the investments to be made of 100,000 crore rupees. This will boost exports and manufacturing as the new supply chains restructured after the pandemic attract foreign investment to India. For this Indian industry, universities, and federal plus state governments have to act in a coordinated way under a single plan, which will happed for the first time under Gati Shakti.   ...

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Tata Projects Limited is the lowest of two bidders at 860 crores for India's new parliament building. The old parliament building is considered inadequate today and was first opened in 1927 when the British first introduced local legislatures as a form of home rule in India. The time allowed for it to be built is a strict 21 months and will require putting a new face on the central Vista area that runs through the centre of New Delhi. It should generate jobs, and provide a fitting place for debating the many issues that face India in its drive for modernization, particularly today after the pandemic when many issues such as manufacturing, industrial development defense, agricultural modernization, infrastructure development are taking on new urgency. After almost three decades of slow progress India is now entering a new phase for speed and implementation of projects.

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Eric Bellman's intervew with Rajiv Lall, chief executive officer of Infrastructure Development Finance, India's largest infrastructure financing company. Lall says the conditions are right for power development to be the next telecom of India's growth story, with some of the same impact that telecom has had bringing mobile phones to hundreds of millions of people in India. IDFC expects 20% growth in net profit in 2010 and 30% in 2011.

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Security is at the heart of India's foreign policy. S. Jaishankar points this out at Thiruvanathapuram. He says this was true of the effort at Balakot and even in the midst of Covid at the Line of Actual Control with China when India sent up enormous numbers of troops to defend the border. This is also behind the stand with China that security and LAC comes first in all relations with China. Trade and exchanges all come in the context of LAC, settle the LAC issues first then we can proceed with better bilateral relations, this is what India is telling China.  There are good reasons for this. India has a large border in the most formidable terrain of the Himalayas which is also close to the plains of India in the LAC with China. Any difficulties at the border would weaken India's secuerity and weaken development efforts in the same way that Japan sought to weaken Chinese development through invasion in the 1930's. Tibet looms out of the past. When China invaded Tibet Nehru's couple of pages in Discovery of India on China show that he had no idea of the China that had emerged with Mao and the CCP in its historical struggle against Japanese nationalists and imperialists. He had an idea of China that came from the Buddhist period and India's links from the past. The ruthless Japanese invasion that China confronted on its soil, and British colonial incursions before that, had already transformed the China of the past, which now under Mao in 1948 may have sought more defensible borders by extending them to Tibet as a buffer state. Historically the British had never tolerated Russian or other European or Japanese interference in the border states such as Tibet. There was also the question of capacity. By the time of the invasion of Tibet in the early 1950's China had already fought the Korean War with the US. India's army and defense forces were just coming out of partition and ill equipped for the task of defending the borders in Tibet region. Current governments in a more normal setting cannot change this part of history, yet can take full recognition of the facts that this has created. A strong defense has to be created for defending a border that extends for thousand of miles now that China has unlawfully occupied Tibet. On it also depends a strong and vigorous development effort that helps build the kind of modern defenses as the economy grows and absorbs new technologies rapidly. Both defense and development go together, one cannot have defense without rapid modernization and development, and one cannot have rapid modernization and development without defense. A weak defense would lead to distractions in development leading to the lack of rapid modernization and development as the intruding power interferes in insidious ways in the internal and external links of the country. This is the lesson of colonial interference of western powers in Asia. As Brendan Simms shows in his new book, Europe - Struggle for Supremacy 1500 to the Present, it is also the lesson of a different kind of colonialism inside Europe since 1500, where weaker states inside Europe fell behind with interference in turns by the imperial powers of France, UK, Austria-Hungary, Prussia and Russia. Poland, Finland, Czech Republic in the past and even Ukraine today are just some examples of what can happen when one loses sight of this principle. Poland and the Polish Commonwealth in the 19th century, Hungary right down to 1956, and China in the 1910-1930, India in the 18th and 19th century were weakened internally even after recognizing the problem, so that recognition of the problem is not an adequate condition to prevent countries from facing such foreign interference. ...

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This interview with Indian Health Minister, Harsh Vardhan, by Amitabh Bachchan and Anant Goenka of the Indian Express covers a range of questions including India's low fatality rate for coronavirus of 1: 46, its vaccination programs for polio, malaria and other diseases long before the pandemic for a population of 1.3 billion people, respect for healthcare workers, and the distribution of the new vaccines under development in India. Vardhan says there are of the 100 vaccines being developed 30 are in India,and of the ones nearing approval 5 are in India.  India makes 60% of the world's vaccines and its distribution capacity for such a large population has been proven many times. During this coronavirus months of preparation are going into reaching the whole population including remote parts in the mountainous areas. Vardhan says the plan is to vaccinate about 30 crores or 300 million people by June-July 2021 out of a total population of 135 crores or 1.35 billion. The vaccination will start with health care workers, moving on to essential service personnel in the military, police and other occupations, and to vulnerable parts of the population based on age and health conditions. Vardhan who is also the chair of the executive board of the WHO as India's representative, says the prime minister is personally holding two 3 hour long meetings to monitor the preparations for the vaccine and its distribution. Vardhan lists the achievements of the Modi administration and the quality of leadership provided by the prime minister- 2100 testing labs, 97% of the country having a testing facility within 3 kms, testing 1-1.5 million people each day, 1 million testing kits produced daily, 2 million beds in India with oxygen support or in ICU, 13,000 quarantine centers. By personally visiting the vaccine development facilities in Ahmedabad, Pune and Hyderabad, the prime minister also directly supported and encouraged scientists and their efforts. ...

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The Aam Aadmi, or Common Man political party founded by Mr. Kejriwal in India. It is expected to take 20-25 seats out of 70 in the Delhi elections. India scholar Ashutosh Varney at Brown University, says the anti-corruption movement is different from earlier protests because corruption is perceived differently by today's employees working in the large pirvate sector compared to public sector employees in previous decades when the private sector was still small. For this middle class corruption takes on a different meaning as holding back the country's economy and development, and making day to day life difficult for ordinary people because of corrupt officials in the government bureaucracy. This also suggests that the anti-corruption movement will be an active part of Indian political life in the future.

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The world depends on rare earths supplies for automobiles, mobile phones, and jet planes. The Washington Post says the US can take up the strategic vulnerability challenge presented by rare earth's supplies 80% control by China in 2026. The Washington Post looks at the US Rare Earths planning- US government as buyer, faster permitting and predictable rules needed to setup US supply chain by 2030. China's Rare earths monopoly can be loosened but not in 2 years says the Washington Post. It will take 5-7 years by 2030 or 2032. Countries such as the US, Canada, Australia, Malaysia and Brazil are resource rich places where rare earth can be mined by the US. for the US government and US companies. Australia's Lynas is the largest non-Chinese company It has a $96 million contract with the US War Departent. America's MP Materials is building domestic supply and is expanding production at Mountain Pass, California. MP Materials is building a rare earths magnet manufacturing plant in Northlake, Texas for $1.25 billion. MP Materials has a "transformational public-private partnership with the US War Department. As long as the US remains the buyer private companies can step up their development of rare earths around the world in the best locations. European Union and India have a separate plan for rare earths supplies of their own with large investments that should further diversify and create new supply chains for rare earths in Asia, Africa and Latin America. ...

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This report in DW.com shows the coverage in German media of the election of Droupadi Murmu as the president of India. She is the second woman and the first person from a tribal community to be elected president. She worked as a school teacher and was elected to the state assembly in Odisha (Orissa) in eastern India twice. She served as the governor of Jharkhand a state with a large tribal community in eastern India from 2015. About 27% of Jharkhand population is tribal and much higher in rural areas because over 90% of tribal people live in the rural villages. Murmu is from the Santhal tribe that is spread over several northeastern states. Most of the tribal population of 106 million people in India is in the northeast, east, some in the west, in border states with China and Pakistan, and in these parts of India it makes up as much as a quarter of the population or higher. This is why a new India requires better educated, good governance dedicated tribal leaders who can contribute to development under sab ka vikas sab ka prayas, development for all through everyone's efforts. ...

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India is seen as critical for the US to develop alternatives to the existing supply chain where manufacturing is concentrated in only one country. US is positioning itself as a key supplier of defense needs of India through joint development and manufacturing in India. GE has a proposal to build jet engines in India, which Jake Sullivan, US National Security Advisor, calls just the kind of effort that will make it possible to rapidly build up the American relationship with India for advanced technologies and the supply chain in manufacturing. 

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Voter turnout exceeds 70% in the 2014 state assembly elections in Jammu and Kashmir, India. Voters weary of years of conflict voted in favor of economic development and infrastructure building in the state.