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New rules for foreign direct investment in India will allow foreign multibrand retailers to own upto 51% of joint ventures in India. Rules set earlier allowed foreign retailers like Wal-Mart to only setup wholesale joint ventures. The move by the Indian government lets Wal-Mart, Carrefour, Metro Group and other retailers open supermarkets. The rules were also changed to allow 100% ownership for single brand retailers such as Nike stores. Prior rules limited single brand retailers to 51% ownership. This is a major step because of the growth in the Indian retail market, and the small portion of the overall market that is occupied by large retail chains with well developed supply chain management. Technopak Advisors Pvt. Ltd, a consulting firm in New Delhi, estimates that the Indian retail market has sales of about $470 billion a year, with only about 5% of this or $27 billion in modern organized retail operations. In the five year period 2012-2016 sales are expected to grow to $675 billion, with $85 billion coming from organized retail. Companies with operations in India that are expected to expand operations include Bharti Wal-Mart, Tesco which has a agreement with Tata Group's Star Bazaar stores, Germany's Metro Group AG. according to these numbers, even with competition from the organized large stores, smaller stores will still occupy 88% compared to 95% of the retail space in 2016. And the growth in the overall market means that the smaller mom and pop type stores will still have growth from $443 billion today to $590 billion in 2016. A government backed study by ICRIER shows that smaller stores lose about 23% of sales in the first year, but recover quickly in following years because of growth in the overall market. The introduction of modern supply chain management, modern refrigeration methods, and large investments by leading global retailers is likely to change the way food and other products are stored and marketed, a revolutionary change for India where these methods and investments lag far behind the developed world. For this reason this may give major impetus to modernizing the Indian economy....

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DJT arrives in Beijing China May 13 2026. Topics that will be discussed are - the Iran War and how to resolve it, trade with China, tariffs, and US Taiwan policy. China continues to run trillion dollar surplus in trade with the world with lower trade surplus with the US after DJT tariffs. From $295 billion in 2024 under Biden the new DJT administration with DJT, Bessent and Jamieson has lowered this to $202 billion by 2026. In that same period the world trade surplus of China has increased from $992 to $1.19 billion. It is not clear whether some of the drop in the US figures is from China sending product through channels to Mexico and Vietnam that is then shipped to the US. DJT showed results in his policies by lowering the trade imbalance by 32%, while trade imbalance with the rest of the world has worsened (increase in trade surplus of China) by 20%. What does this show? We can safely assume that excessive trade imbalances are not in either China, EU, or America's interest. China increases trade and political friction by doing so, and it leaves its own policy weak by overdependence on exports, too little effort to increase domestic consumption and living standards.  FOr the US and EU trade imbalances with China of over $1 trillion reflect misguided policy at the top by US and EU decision makers and governments. By exposing their manufacturing base they are losing valuable jobs by the millions and creating a situation where the few with good jobs in select industries live in large cities and the rest of the country in smaller towns and rural areas suffering from lack of amanufacturing base. This weakens the investment base for public services and leads to lack of investment ininfrastructure. This is called deindustrialization which the DJT and Biden administrations both fight hard to reverse for the last 10 years since the disastrous years of the Obama and Bush administrations 2000-2016. For this reason we can say a good Republican is as good as a good Democrat, a bad Republican is as bad as a bad Democrat, political labels are just that labels. The media in US and EU are on a wrong footing and still fail to cover this the way it should be covered to shake off the lethargy in public sentiment in the US so that a rapid drive to reindustrialize and build new new infrastructure on top of the old that was built after World War 1 can take place. In today's world India is stepping up with major infrastructure building just as the US and EU ramp up their rebuilding.  ...

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William Booth provides a must read insight into why poorly educated young people attempt to cross the border into the U.S. looking for work and opportunity, and why Mexico fails to provide the elementary and high school educational system it needs to increase growth to create opportunity. Mexico's education system is failing when compared with other countries in the Group of 20. Sixth graders get 562 hours of instructional learning compared to 1,195 in S. Korea, according to Mexicans First, a group working to change the way the educational system works. In recent international exams half of Mexican 15 year old students scores ranked them at lower levels in math and only a little better in reading and reasoning. "De Panzazo" is a popular documentary prepared by Mexicanos Primero on the dire situation in the school system. One of the most striking measures of this failure is that only a quarter of the children graduate from high school. This only pushes more poorly educated people to attempt to cross the border into the U.S. looking for work. It means the Mexican economy is deprived of a highly educated workforce to increase productivity and growth. The middle class tries to get their children educated in private academies. And the nation's employers use special training to improve skills for workers to be able to compete in a global economy. Part of the reason rests, say experts, on the ability of the powerful teachers union with 1.4 million members to block change for teacher selection based on merits and competency, and exams for teachers. Instead teacher positions are sold, with an elementary school position tenured for life selling for $20,000 in Cancun, and a rural village position for $2000, according to Mexicanos Primeros. Even president Calderon owed his election to the support of the teachers union. And the current PAN presidential candidate Vazquez Mota, who was Education Secretary for two and half years could only go part of the way. She got the union to agree to have new teachers selected by having them take exams, made public standardized test scores, and pushed state governors to show employment rolls and whether teachers actually taught in classrooms or worked at union offices. Calderon failed to make changes because he agreed with the union that the union would take the lead on changes not the education ministry, and had the union president's son-in-law, Fernando Gonzalez, as deputy secretary of education. Jorge Castenada, a former foreign minister, says Mota was fired because of union demands. In July 250,000 teachers are required to take competency exams, but the union has asked its members to ignore the exams, and the education ministry will not do much beyond using the exam for diagnostic purposes for teachers who take the exam. The problems at the elementary and high school levels are evident also in other countries such as India and Brazil leaving the real potential of the labor force untapped....

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This year 2025 is the 75th year since the invasion of Tibet by Communist China under Mao in 1950, and the 66th year since the uprising in Lhasa in 1959. The new book by Tibet Dalai Lama will be out in March 2025- Voice for the Voiceless: Over Seven Decades of Struggle With China for My Land and My People.  The Dalai Lama calls for preserving Tibet's Buddhist civilization and culture within China. Bringing China's borders to the borders of India was a serious mistake as the mountains of Tibet and Nepal acted as a buffer zone between China and India. The invasion was a result of seeing India as India under a colonial power the British and independent India still run in 1950 under a system modeled on Britain- what Mao fought against since the 1920's.  In 2025 India has emerged as distinctly Indian and China has emerged from the 1950's communist state into a market economy state. The old colonial period systems no longer exist and only a reversion to the old Buddhist periods since the 5th century in terms of borders makes sense. The Tibet invasion after millenium in which Tibet had relations with Nepal, China and India has created other issues in this region. In the centuries before the colonial powers entered Asia in the 15th century, the Portuguese, Dutch and the British, there was contact, commerce and other relations between India, Nepal, Tibet and China. The earliest contacts were with Bodhidharma prince from from India going to China through these Tibetan mountains to convert China to Buddhism in about the 6th century AD. China reverting to its Buddhist culture is a serious possibility because it is so intertwined with a sense of being Chinese and the culture of China. And with this the borders of times past.   ...

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Making some territorial concessions appears to be the only way for peace talks to succeed. For a long time there was insistence on territorial sovereignty of Ukraine by EU and NATO leaders. This appears to have prolonged the war- with needless loss of life on both sides, and costly damage to Ukraine infrastructure, a population that had to face additional winters and hardship in war ravaged areas. NATO's Stoltenberg from Norway, leaders of northern Nordic and Baltic countries, the UK, could take that position without having to face the hardship of the war. NATO had to be re-formed under a new name and new structure  following the collapse of the Soviet Union, with wariness about the possibility of centuries old since 1700 UK and Nordic historical adversarial relationship with Russia casting a shadow over that organization, and embroiling the US in conflicts not of its own choice or of wise leadership. This is the root cause of the Ukraine war. It would have been best to completely restructure NATO and give it a new name without Northern European nations leading it. Principles matter once soviet communism was no longer there NATO formed for its expansionism in 1950's had served it's purpose. Rasmussen from Denmark and Stoltenberg from Norway led the organization for the last decade and half from 2009-2014 and 2014 to 2025, with backing from Obama/Merkel for most of the period of the war in Ukraine. Also most of the period NATO expanded to Russian borders happened under Northern European leaders from Spain, Britain and Nordics (Solana, Robertson, Scheffer, Rasmussen and Stoltenberg) and the organization NATO getting the northern European slant based on historical adversarial relationship of Britain and Russia since 1700- for no other reason than the British wanting to protect its large Empire and commerce in India which in the 18th and 19th century included most of Asia. Under Robertson the UK Defense Secretary much of this transformation into turning NATO into something anti-Russian happened which was primarily because of British and Nordic perceptions of Russia as an adversary. Robertson added the following countries at the Prague Summit in 2002 to NATO- the Baltics, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. Russia faced internal upheaval in those years and Yeltsin in resigned in 1999, Putin was elected in 2000. It is clear that Russia had suffered severe economic hardship in that period and Putin's first goal in 2002 was to stabilize the economy.  It could be said that this turning NATO over to UK and Nordics was a huge mistake considering that Russia was still the largest nuclear power after the US, and British policy was now determining US policy. And Britain's Robertson/NATO should not have involved itself in the Afghanistan war using Article 5, as the US could have handled this alone and limited that engagement. It got US involved in another conflict, conflict with Russia that was to come in Ukraine on the side of the Baltics and Ukraine, without US clearly understanding what the roots of that war was about and implied confrontation with Russia 20 years after the Prague Summit in 2002 under George Bush junior. The incompetence of Bush and Obama/Merkel laid the seeds of the Ukraine war in 2022 following Robertson, Rasmussen, Stoltenberg, small Nordic nations and Britain creating a conflict that did not need to happen, with loss of hundreds of thousands of lives of Russian speaking fraternal peoples of both Russia and Ukraine. The Republican sentiment under DJT of the tragedy of such huge losses of young people, and desire to end this loss of life, can nowhere be seen in bellicose talk in northern European nations, that take the US for granted to fight their wars.  The wisdom of Washington, Lincoln and TR/FDR clearly caution in getting involved in European centuries old animosities. For the US it meant in practical terms that it could no longer carry out the Monroe Doctrine essential for peace and good governance in the western hemisphere as only a Russia desperate to make its views known about NATO would interfere in the western hemisphere against US assertion of the Monroe Doctrine with the US Navy. Instead drug trafficking gangs took over Latin American countries and created a flow of fentanyl and millions of people through migrant traffickers across the US southern border. As America has expressed its concern for loss of Russian and Ukrainian men in the war for the first time under DJT Russia has distanced itself from Venezuela, Mexico and Latin America. The loss of hundreds of thousands of young Americans to fentanyl is a shared tragedy with the loss of hundreds of thousands of young Russians and Ukrainians in the last decade. How reliable are Northern European countries when it comes to protecting the eastern seaboard of the US with the acquisition of Greenland? It is a policy pursued by presidents since the Alaska Acquisition from Russia. By Seward, Teddy Roosevelt, Harry Truman and DJT. Denmark the land where NATO secretary general Rasmussen was from followed by Stoltenberg from Norway  (for 15 of the years of the war in Ukraine 2010-2025) the US efforts to protect its eastern seaboard are rebuffed by both Denmark and Norway, and the US presented in a negative light as an imperialist power in the face of Danish East India Company's  colonial attitude since 1700 clearly imitating the colonial British East India company.  It shows Northern European nations looking out for themselves not for the US, and embroiling the US in their wars at the cost of the entire western hemisphere being destabilized. The population of UK, Denmark and Norway, Baltics is far less than the Mumbai, Shanghai, Sao Paulo , Berlin and Tokyo regions. Should the views of a small population in northern Europe of 2% of the total determine the future of US, Europe, China, India, Brazil, and other parts of the world with 5 billion people the 98%, when issues of war and nuclear conflict, nuclear buildup, the western hemisphere destabilized with drug trafficking gangs running rampant in countries, divide the world in opposing blocs, when the wellbeing of most of the world's people in Asia and Latin America, Africa is at stake by establishing a essential degree of cooperation by all sides. The US under DJT has chosen a wise policy of cooperation over conflict -with China, with Russia, with all the major powers, and with smaller powers. Reading the wisdom contained in the writings of Washington, Lincoln, TR/FDR confirms it is clearly the wise choice. ...

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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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Shale oil producer spending in the U.S. is forecast to drop by 3%, but this will still add one million barrels a day of additional shale oil production. Prices are now at about $45 a barrel and shale producers are cutting back on production rigs in operation with the 40% decline in oil prices. The EIA expects oil production to reach an average of 12.1 million barrels daily in 2019 from an average of 10.9 barrels a day in 2018. This suggests there will be additional supplies and continued downward pressure on oil prices. The situation is favorable for the U.S. and countries such as India which benefit from lower oil prices.

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Changes that president Biden is making to make certain that students who took out a loan of $30,000 for college do not end up paying for two decades, and be still owing $60,000. WSJ explains that the original student loan law written decades ago does not take into account the realities of today as young people are forced into long repayment plans and still cannot complete payment. President Biden has stated that no student loan borrower would be expected to pay more than 5% of his or her income for student loan payments each month. This helps student borrowers across the country and makes college education affordable. Most Americans have failed to realize the importance of higher education and its affordability for the US economy, the US ability to compete with China, India and the EU, and the damage done to US education by outdated laws. The general failure to support education and its affordability has come at a great cost to the US economy and its strength in the world, similar to the damage done by the neglect of manufacturing and communities across America that depend on good manufacturing jobs. The failures of laissez faire theory under Reagan and it becoming part of exiting culture leading to lack of government support for education, manufacturing, and infrastructure has weakened America and neglected communities across the country. ...

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Because India is still largely rural with about 65% of the population in the countryside rural poverty is a matter of huge importance. In a country of a billion people this is easily about 600-650 million people the vast majority of the world's poor. Though low inflation in agricultural produce and in agricultural wages have increased concern for rural poverty in India there are changes in multiple dimensions that have raised the quality of living in a big way. There is a major thrust in government programs directed at multiple levels for clean India, housing healthcare, cooking gas, electricity, banking, in the rural villages. About 4 million homes are built annually with government assistance and investment in rural programs has more than doubled in the last 7 years.  The National Food Security programs NFGSA guarantees purchases of rice and wheat at very low prices -set at 2 rupees per kilogram of wheat and  3 rupees per kilogram of rice or about $0.03 per kilogram.  This reduces the pressure on migration to cities making cities less inhabitable and finding it hard to cope as in countries like Indonesia, Philippines and in Africa. It gives more time for urbanization to take place in a better way as more resources and infrastructure is created for urbanization. Some states in India are about 50% urbanized with Tamilnadu (Madras or Chennai),  and Kerala (Cochin, Thiruvanathapuram) in the south and Maharashtra (Bombay or Mumbai) and Gujarat (Ahmedbad) in the north west, are at about 50% urbanization rate. The low inflation rate for agricultural wages affecting farm incomes combined with contributions by rural people to complement government contributions for housing, healthcare,  reduces the mount of money available for consumer spending in rural areas, affecting the economy. A problem in the short run, but with synergistic changes across multiple dimensions pushing the country forward across urban and rural areas. With the huge urban infrastructure spending increases creating more space for economic growth across the country. There is a general sense that for development a multi dimensional approach is needed, and a rising tide lift all boats as India urbanizes like China has done in the last 20 years. ...

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Douglas Wilson was born in Annapolis, Maryland, before his father, a Baptist pastor, moved the family to Idaho in the American West.  Wilson started a Christian revival movement from Christ Church, Idaho, which is based on his views of Calvinism and the original teachings of Christianity dating back to the Mayflower Compact of 1602 set in Geneva, which outlined the vision of the early colonists to America of the relations between the church and the government, setting forth their vision. This is America going back to the earliest days in 1600, of Britain and Northern Europe, and the settlement of a vast continent 185 years before the drafting at a convention for the new Republic, of the United States of America the 13 original colonies in 1787. The original roots of the Nation in the Geneva Compact of 1602 can still be seen in Geneva, Switzerland, near the Calvinist cathedral in the center of the French Swiss town of Geneva, that acted as a crossroads for the prominent ideas on Christian thought at the time. From it's earliest days for the colonists since 1602, the Tynsdale Bible of the 16th century that brought it into the English language from Latin and Greek, and its offshoot the Authorized King James Version of the Bible of 1611 formed the basis of civilized life in the American colonies, and helped the colonists seek a new world in the wilderness that was the North American continent in the years 1600 to 1780. In the early years of the 13 colonies on the Atlantic seaboard, and further west into Ohio and Michigan- vast untamed forests, mountains, lakes and rivers. From 1780 to the 1880 this wilderness extended into the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and Wyoming upto the Pacific. Ideas of Common Prayer in schools and in everyday life informed the society of the time and was integrated in all parts of life. Only after 1780 were the ideas of separation of church and state developed by Madison and Jefferson for the constitutional framework of orderly government and respect for rights of citizens to practice their faith. At no point was it intended to take the Common Prayer out of schools, which is essentially a new idea from the 19th century. There is mention of Asian religions Buddhism and the religion of the Upanishads in India in the argument against prayer in schools,  yet it is a fact that this is only a theory as immigration from China, Japan, and India was actively discouraged, and also banned in many ways, till the Irish Kennedy administration in 1960. And it is also a fact that Mohandas Gandhi the leader of India drew great inspiration from the King James 1611 version of the Bible, and it helped him deepen his religious beliefs in the Upanishads to create the modern Indian state for 1.4 billion people in Asia. Most of the hymns of the Christian faith were known to Gandhi and formed part of his beliefs, when the Common Prayer itself started disappearing from American schools in a post war reaction to colonialism, imperialism and racial discrimination, such that it depleted the very reserves of civilization, of wisdom and thought, of science and technology, that helped create America out of the wilderness. ...

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India recorded 100,000 cases in one day on April 5, 2021. About half of these cases are in one state Maharashtra. Most of the cases are in about 6 states. Super spreader events such as cricket matches, weddings and social gatherings, political rallies with elections in states of Tamilnadu, Kerala, West Bengal, and Holi festival, are increasing the rate of infection. People have become lax in wearing masks and following the safety protocol after cases dropped to less than 15,000 for the whole country in February. This report says variants also are playing apart. Google Mobility Reports have shown that movements around retail areas dropped to about 80% below regular levels in the middle of the national lockdown in spring of 2020, and have come back up to about 20% below normal levels. When the winter surge did not happen, and the vaccination drive started in January in India people became less vigilant, allowing infections to increase. The vaccination drive is accelerating and open to everyone over 45 years. About 80 million doses have been given and the target is still for 300 million doses by August.  ...

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With the change in U.S. position on climate change, carbon emissions, and the move to raise tariffs on China's exports to the U.S. China faces a new dimension in its global relationships. Against this background China is shifting to a long term view of its relationship with India. China's new foreign policy leaders after the recent party Congress, vice president Wang Qishan and Foreign Minister Wang Yi, now see the need for new partners in a multipolar global world for the long term as China and India countries with large populations and a need for stable world trade share common interests. Wang steers the Central Foreign Affairs Commission with Yang Jiechi as director. China now sees " a lot of shared interests, concerns and positions," in the words of China's Representative Lu, in the long term issues of globalisation, urbanization, pollution, and concern for achieving stable development with high growth rates.  China now takes the long view looking back at the unprecedented change of the last 100 years, as it maps out its plans for the future. The U.S. has challenged the ideas in the blueprint for development of "Made in China 2025," particularly as it relates to western transfer of technology to China. This has created a new situation for which China is still looking for answers, and ways to come up with new strategies for development without the nearly unrestricted access to western technology of the last 2 decades.  Shared positions on world trade with India and India's close relations with the U.S. add credibility in China's  negotiating positions with the U.S.                  ...

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So much for political campaigning and talk of inflation, inflation comes in lower in September after DJT tariffs of 10-15% on EU, Japan and other trading partners. The higher tariffs on China are action needed to reduce trillion dollar trade deficits the world has with China, deficits that are economically destabilizing for the world economy, with supply chain concentration a serious problem. US inflation in September came in at 3.0 percent lower than expected.  One reason is that the headline numbers are high but in actual practice the tariffs are on average at 12.5% not 17% or 25% as headlines show. The tariffs vary by country and the US was careful to keep them at 10% for the EU and Britain and 15% for Japan, the key trading partners. China is an exception at 47% because it is US policy to reduce the world's 1 trillion trade deficit with China and cutting this is a major goal. For decades the US tried every possible way to bring it down to no avail till this effort with tariffs. Another is exceptions in products- for India this includes semiconductors, smartphones and pharmaceuticals. Another factor is that postpandemic inflation in 2021-2022 created higher profit margins in auto, retail and other sectors of the economy. As a result only 30-40% of the tariff gets passed onn to consumers. In autos only about 20% because buyers cannot afford the high prices. Some tariffs are still being negotiated and are a foreign policy tool to get India to stop funding Russia in the Ukraine war knowing that India was importing most of its oil from non-Russian sources till 2019. China is also funding Russia, that is true but the US can insist on exercising its leverage with Asian partners not China. With China the tariff on fentanyl and the overall 47% tariff- down from 57% after meetings in Busan, South Korea between Xi and DJT last month- shows the US takes the Chinese role in distorting world trade to its benefit seriously.  ...

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Continuity and stability mark the choices for the new cabinet in India of PM Modi. Retaining their Ministries are-Jaishankar at the Foreign Ministry, Nirmala Sitharaman at Finance Ministry , Amit Shah at Home Ministry, Rajnath Singh at Defense, Narendra Modi at Atomic Energy and Space Agency and the Personnel, Public Grievances Pensions Ministry, Also continuing are Nitin Gadkari at Roads, Transport and Highways, Piyush Goyal the Commerce Ministry. Prahlad Joshi formerly in parliamentary Affairs is now at the New and Renewable Energy Ministry plus the Consumer Affairs, Food public distribution ministry. Hardeep Singh Puri retains the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas. Sa Newcomers to Cabinet-Shivraj Singh Chouhan three term Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh in central India is the new Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Ministry a critical ministry in a still rural country. Ram Mohan Naidu (TDP &NDA Andhra Pradesh) is the new Aviation Minister Jyotirao Scindia was placed with the Telecom Ministry. Kishan Reddy was given the Coal and Mining Ministry. Lalan Singh close associate of Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar is the new Fisheries, Animal Husbandry, Dairying and of Panchayati Raj village local government. Sarbananda Sonowal is new Minister of Ports, Shipping and Waterways with the job of building modern shipping logistics for exports in the way China has done. Ram Vilas Paswan from Bihar at the Ministry of Food Processing. ...

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Trade economists from Ivy League universities, are still peddling the old theories on trade from textbooks that make no sense and have got America in this huge mess that it is in where other countries are ripping America off with unfair trade practices. These economists have turned a blind eye, turned their backs to the great damage done to industrial towns and communities across America for two decades with the loss of manufacturing. Take Irwin's point that the US would have to monitor rates on 13000 tariff line items. This is ridiculous because the US simply needs to monitor the key products such as semiconductors, oil and gas, LNG. In just one negotiation with India the US having a trade deficit DJT states of $100 billion with India- terrible trade. By opening up supply of LNG and oil US can fill India's needs for Oil and LNG and cut the deficit to zero. Who came up with this idea. Indian PM Modi and his trade team. Once it was known that the status quo was unacceptable India came up with its own ideas lets import what we get from Russia from the US. Yes we had discounts from Russia but that was when oil prices were high. DJT's effort to get oil prices down by increasing US production will make it possible for India to get this oil at similar prices. India is a much bigger economy now than during Covid 5 years back India can do this. US and India win-win by doing joint aviation production deals and US gains with sale of F-35 stealth fighters. It is just common sense. Sadly, much of this is common sense that is beyond Ivy League Economics departments at American universities.  Reciprocal Tariffs make a lot of sense because this is how fairness is done- for China, for India. In the case of Mexico, Canada, China, on stopping flow of fentanyl- this reciprocal tariff is not a tariff it is as Commerce Secretarty Luttnick pointed out domestic policy of the United States. Which country would tolerate 490,000 deaths from fentanyl over 12 years and not take domesti policy action. It is not that the policy actions are taken it is that these action should have been taken a long time back. ...

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Canada has still not figured out a way to assimilate the 800 or so Indian bands, who are the native peoples of Canada, and still help them keep their languages, cultures and traditions, and independent existence. The bureaucratic structures set up to adminster the Indian Act and post colonial policies act as another hurdle to creating apolicy that fits in with the new values of a new generation of multicultural Canadians.

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The importance of a gap year in education remains underutilized in Indian education because of a lack of role models. A gap year in education during the early college and postgraduate years can give a person new experiences and skills, a new sense of purpose, that he or she may carry over into further education and create additional opportunities over time. In this way the gap year actually reinforces the idea that is behind changes in the way education is being setup today, that encourage young people to try out different subjects in the sciences and the humanities to find what they are best at and where their interests lie. In the same way new experiences including travel, meeting people, trying out new activities can enhance one's personal development and growth as a person.

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How will countries like India generate jobs when technology enables manufacturing and other activity to do work with fewer and fewer people. Even Hon Hai in China is shifting work to robots. Technological progress is leaving more people unemployed and widening income gaps with the benefits going to a few people, says the Economist in this research based essay. It will require carefully managed governance to invest in infrastructure, raise skills of less skilled workers through education, and wage subsidies for those left behind to ensure our current system works in the future.

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Tata has a couple of things going for it to make a car at a price under $2500- a different vision behind it and a longer term idea of the market and its opportunities for Tata Motors. This is a personal vision of Ratan Tata, the last in the series of Tata family members who have run a company that was at the leading edge of industrialization in India since British times in the closing years of the 19th century. He sees this as a way to bring a car that is affordable to millions of Indians, the average Indian, just as his father and great grand father were pioneers in India's early steps towards industrialization. This also will serve another purpose. It will provide momentum to India's manufacturing base by putting India's auto industry on its way to sell cars by the millions in the next ten years. The cost was a challenge to Indian engineers ingenuity. It would help them develop something from scratch from a clean slate, and as he hoped reinvent the car if possible. The cost also was doable in India because of the wages paid to Indian engineers and workers are different. The entire cost structure with suppliers like Bosch providing the engine also and internet purchases of parts coming under a completely different way of doing business, again a reinvent of things. And the skimping on a lot of basics like a radio is possible in the Indian context where the inital target market is the scooter family of which in India there are millions. People who would simply be waiting for such a bare bones car, not see it as such because it is a great advance over a scooter even in terms of safety. What most people who have never been to India would not be able to grasp is that a whole family of four can be seen riding on a scooter or motorbike in India on weekends in Indian urban areas. Tata's idea of the market potential is the way it can ride the next stages of increasing incomes in India. Once it has come up with this car it can come up with enhanced versions with an airconditioning and radio and so on, and still price it way below competitors with Tata's quality and brand name and innovative design. As long as Tata can sell all the cars it makes it can expand production rapidly. Tata's costs for engineering a top selling model may be only 20% of the $350 million it costs western companies, according to Alix Partners, with savings of $300 to $1000 per car right there. Labor costs are about $1.20 per hour in India, less than what auto workers make in China, this provides more cost savings. Tata plans to supply kits to dealers who will do the final assembly in small workshops. This distribution strategy will save Tata another chunk of costs, as about 20% of the car's cost is in distribution in the USA. ...

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The U.S. maintains the No.1 spot in attractiveness as a foreign investment destination in 2014, for the second year, in the A.T. Kearney annual survey. Mexico and India dropped in the rankings. China is still ranked second.

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Ip's point about the actions of previous president's in promoting a recovery long after they are in office has to be qualified by the uncertain economic outlook for 2013, with a slowdown in the eurozone, China and India, and the efforts to control the deficit in the U.S. also affecting the economic outlook. The process of deleveraging has still to work itself out and the economy is still being supported by the Fed's continual easing of monetary policy.

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Raul Castro of Cuba indicted by the US Justice Department May 20, 2026 for Cuban Americans killed when civilian flights helping Cuban refugees in the waters near Cuba were shot on orders from Raul Castro, as minister of defense. Only towards the end of this news report by Perry Stein and Karen De Young of the Washington Post is it clear that this indictment is on Cuba Independence Day March 20, which in 1902 marks the setup of the Republic of Cuba, at the end of the US military takeover of Cuba from the Spanish during the Spanish American War. Cuba under Castro does not use this day but the day of the Communist takeover in 1959 of January 1, and celebrates as Day of the Revolution, July 26, the day when the attack on the Moncada military barracks started the Revolution against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. Only the Obama administration similar to its failures in addressing the Iran nuclear weapons crisis refused to recognize 1902 date as the Cuban Independence Day, all other administrations before did. Under the Monroe Doctrine of 1824 the US clearly considered Latin America as its neighborhood and would not accept any foreign power in its neighborhood, making the Platt amendment attached to the Cuban 1902 Constitution permitting US intervention simply an addition. That the Monroe Doctrine was proven right in 2 ways is not mentioned by the Washington Post or by the elite media. What it did was to prevent European colonial powers from intervening and restoring colonial type rule to Spanish colonies in Latin America. It was welcomed by the British as it had no such designs, objected to by the Spanish Dutch and the French who had such designs for their colonial Empires. It was resented by Cubans naturally but Cubans did not consider that US is the only power who even when it pushed the Spaniards out of Cuba and Philippines in the Spanish American War of 1900 after centuries of Spanish occupation, the only power who prepared Cuba for Independence within 4 years in 1898. Which European colonial power could do this? The other reason for the Monroe Doctrine is in the Platt Amendment attached to the Cuban Constitution which committed the Cuban government to implement and maintain programs the US introduced to control yellow fever and infectious diseases. In 1934 FDR removed the Platt Amendment under a "Good Neighbor Policy. It is the relaxation of the Monroe Doctrine by future American adminstrations that has brought so much suffering and pain to North America, for the US and Mexico with illegal immigration and drugs, corrupting governance in Mexico and creating social political strife in the US, more deaths from drugs than the Vietnam, Korean and WWI combined. Today's Cuba's economy and the Venezuelan economy that copied Cuba's example has completely collapsed, one fourth of the people left the country taking with them the vitally important skills, and leading to economic hardships for the people. This would not have happened if the Monroe Doctrine implemented under the Good Neighbor ideas of FDR and the Alliance for Progress of JFK was kept in place. This shows that Cuba's Independence happened when the Americans supported Cuban rebels fighting for independence in 1898 just as the Indian Independence was won in 1947 from the British under Labour's PM Clement Attlee in 1945 taking action. Four years of American rule in Cuba to prepare it for independence as a transition is far better than 4 centuries of Spanish rule, and 2 years of British rule as a transition 1945-1947 under Attlee (who replaced Churchill in 1945 and setup the NHS) is better than 2 centuries of British colonial rule. In this sense America is with the Cuban people, just as the average British public and working class is with the Indian people.   ...

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 India would be 27% richer if it rebalanced its workforce to include more women, according to the IMF. Women's participation in the workforce is the lowest of the G20 countries except Saudi Arabia. Contributing only one sixth of economic output, half the global average. The employment rate of women in India has dropped instead of rising from its low level, an alarm signal. It was 35% in 2005, now in 2018 it is 26%. In the last decade the economy has more than doubled in size and number of working age women, according to the IMF is 470 million. Part of the reason is that more girls are in school. Conservative social rules mean that women are discouraged by their families or in-laws from working outside the home. As families become richer more women stop working. The lack of manufacturing jobs is also a constraint. Men have taken 90% of the 36 million jobs in industry created since 2005. Census data show that more than one third of women would take jobs if they were available. Urbanization and the shift to cities means less work in farming, mechanization of farming makes for less agricultural work. Changes in attitudes and better policies for maternity leave and women friendly workplace could help. Because most of the jobs are still in the informal economy, this is not as effective today but could make a difference in the future as more formal jobs are generated. Attitudes where men do more housework can make a difference. If men spent about 2 hours doing dishes and putting kids to bed, there would be a 10% increase in women's participation rate in the workforce, according to a World Bank study. One study shows this would add 550 billion dollars to India's economy. True especially as more women are getting university degrees and high school education. and the census study shows women have the desire to work if cultural attitudes, more men doing housework, and the job market were to change.       ...

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Without the patience and skills of S. Jaishankar peace at the Indian border with China could not have been restored in 2022. Here he describes the challenge of border incursions when he still called on his counterpart Wang Yi and maintained friendly communications, asking Yi not to let China complicate matters so that solutions could be found and things did not deteriorate further. At the time of tense Ukraine dispute in Europe, Jaishankar who was earlier the Indian ambassador to China, navigated this period of tension with China using his knowledge of China and how best to continue the diplomatic communications.  Less well known is the work put in by Jaishakar to bring citizen to citizen contact between Indians and Chinese by setting up such intercultural and educational programs in several Chinese cities as Ambassador to India. Jaishankar had the foresight to know that this would be important for the future. Yet these contacts are only a small fraction of the potential contacts between India and China on a citizen to citizen direct basis that are needed. Never is that more true than today with the wars in Europe, and the need for peaceful development in Asia. China is still a middle income country and India modernizing to become a middle income country. Both Europe and the US are far ahead in development than China and India. Jaishankar was appointed the Foreign Secretary of India in 2015 and in 2019 Foreign Minister of India in the Modi administration. He was the longest serving Ambassador to China for about 5 years in 2009-2013. He is unique because of his having been a senior diplomat to China, Japan, Singapore and the US, and speaks Japanese and Chinese. ...

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The treaty of handover by Britain of Hong Kong under one country, two systems was flawed in the way it was negotiated. French commentators looking at the problem say the city is caught between its past in the British Empire and the new monolithic state that China represents. Under the British French visitors looked at the city and wondered how there was freedom but no democracy, people were just selfishly just interested in making money. Chris Patten, Britain's administrator of the territory tried but failed to get democratic process, During the negotiations in 1984 for handover the chief British negotiator, Percy Cradock, a former ambassador to China, tells the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that - In Hong Kong where there is such a disparity in strength between the two sides, you go for the best you can get, I take the simple view that half a loaf is better than no bread." Britain had very little leverage to secure a separate future for Hong Kong because it was small compared to much larger China resulting unequal negotiations. The same is true today as the best Britain could do is to get out a joint declaration with Australia and Canada saying that it did not approve the new security law, that it violated the treaty signed by Britain and China. The French view expressed by the editor of La Croix is that hasty poorly planned British exits- as happened in British India -have led to crises and conflicts for postcolonial generations, a legacy of British colonial rule. India and Pakistan still sorting out Kashmir, and India and China still fighting about the McMahon Line border area. The situation is very different for the U.S. which now has to respond in some way, and this comes as trade tensions and coronavirus tensions about its origins in China and the failure of Beijing to allow quick entry for an American team into Wuhan. This being for 7 weeks between Jan 6 request and February 16 permission. America sees this as losing 7 precious weeks to make up its own determination of the dangers when every week health experts say means saving or losing tens of thousands of lives. With loss of 100,000 lives the Trump administration has a sense of being misled. This French report in FR24 points out that the lack of a strong response from the U.S. would be something similar to letting the Berlin Wall happen without a response. Both sides in a situation where the territory of Hong Kong remained mostly about money and with a disproportionate influence of business interests similar to its founding under the unequal treaties of the 1850's. ...