Friendly Neighbours

In the recent past, there have been quite a number of good will gestures that are happening between the neighbours, India, China and Pakistan. I think, in some sense, we are probably moving to a more practical mode.

It's an interesting thing about China. I think there is no other country in the world that really stands up to the US & the EU. Now we have all of these textile imports talks happening where the US and the EU are contemplating putting quotas on the amount of imports from China (expected to have more than 30% of the world market). I think it is a good time for India to leverage this opportunity.

Of course, we never planned for the Jan 1st dismantling of quotas and hence we are not able to capture market share like the Chinese. But in any case, it is a good time to work with the Chinese and try to make up for lost time. I think, we in India, tend to become self-satisfied pretty quickly with our small wins. We do have some of the largest producers of denims etc in the world yet we do not have as large a presence as China has in the textile world market. Yet we are so smug about it but not doing enough.

This article from IHT speaks of a new era in the Indo-Chinese relationships. In fact they go a step further to call it the rising dominance of Asia in the world. Makes good press, but I just hope we act quickly on it.

In fact the thing I really think is true is the speed of action in India. Even though things have changed a lot, there needs to be a much faster response to the changing market scenario. With the state of coalition politics as it is now, it is very difficult with the number of internal agendas floating around. But I think there is a lot of optimism in general about the country which is great.

We need to take some cues from the Chinese for sure!!