New Delhi: India is closing in on China as the world’s largest emerging market, reports The Financial Times.
The report looks closely at the Indian stock market and notes the “soaring share prices, stock sales and earnings growth by Indian companies”. Attributing the rise to “domestic inflows” and “retail investment boom”, correspondents Alan Livsey and Joseph Cotterill call India one of the “best-performing markets in the world in local currency terms”, which “kept pace with US markets in dollar terms in recent decades.”
While Chinese company valuations have deflated, “Indian company earnings are climbing” at a pace “not faster than emerging markets”, the report notes.
Another report in Bloomberg notes that India is drawing investors owing to its “world-beating economic growth, while China is “grappling with a sluggish economy”.
Correspondent Saikat Das reports that a Singapore-based debt financing platform is shifting its “focus” to India from China. “EvolutionX Debt Capital Pte., a joint venture between Temasek Holdings Pte. and DBS Bank, is shifting its investment focus to India from China, aiming to capture a bigger share of the South Asian nation’s expanding private credit market,” Das writes.
The report, titled ‘Temasek-Backed EvolutionX Shifts Fund Focus to India From China’, points out that “private credit is gaining traction” despite the warnings about risks in India’s direct lending market, which has witnessed “explosive growth”.
Comparing India and China’s Olympic records, Japanese media organisation Nikkei Asia notes that while Chinese sportspersons have clinched gold medals 285 times so far, with 38 in just one edition of the Games in Tokyo in 2021, India has won only 10 golds in its Olympic history.
In the report titled ‘Can India turn from perpetual Olympic minnow into a powerhouse?’, John Duerden focuses on the drawbacks of India’s sports policy, which was described as “poorly conceived and chaotic” by an expert quoted by him. “Sport isn’t typically a career choice for most people who aspire to be successful in other professions,” Simon Chadwick, a professor of sport and geopolitical economy at SKEMA Business School in Paris, tells Nikkei Asia, highlighting that the country has so far only focused on one sport — cricket.
While Sarthak Mondal, president of the Indian Sport Management Association is optimistic about winning in double digits, he tells Nikkei Asia that India’s “priorities” are “different”. “We are a mid-to-poor income country and our problems are related to education, illiteracy, and health crises, [which] are pressing needs for government rather than sport,” he says.
The report then highlights the road ahead — the possibility of India hosting the Olympics. “China took a major step forward by hosting the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. India could do the same in 2036,” Duerden writes.
A piece by former Vice Chief of the Naval Staff, S.N. Ghormade, in The Diplomat delves into how the Indian Navy has “enhanced India’s soft power”. “One arena where the Navy’s soft power has been more clearly visible than anywhere else: humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR) operations,” Ghormade writes.
The piece — ‘The Indian Navy’s Humanitarian Role: Strategic Soft Power in Action’ — calls the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean a turning point, when the Indian Navy “launched a massive HADR effort to help not only its states of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Andaman and Nicobar Islands (Operation Madad and Sea Waves), but also Sri Lanka (Operation Rainbow), the Maldives (Operation Castor) and Indonesia (Operation Gambhir).”
Ghormade also focuses on India’s SAGAR vision and “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam” philosophy. He lists operations, like the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, Cyclone Nargis and Operation Blossom, emphasising that they contributed to a “positive image of India globally”.
A Bloomberg report — ‘India’s Top Rickshaw Maker Sees Bright Future in CNG Motorbikes’ — by Satviki Sanjay discusses Bajaj Auto, India’s top auto rickshaw maker’s foray into the CNG vehicle space. The company, which claims that its sports motorcycle ‘Bajaj Freedom’ is the first of its kind in the world, has already received thousands of orders as people choose “affordable and greener” ways of commuting.
“India’s petroleum and gas ministry has said it aims to build 17,500 CNG filling stations across the country by 2030,” the report reads. Noting that while the Pune-based company ranks fourth in the country for its scooters, the report cites Bajaj’s plans to expand its CNG bikes, or bikes that commonly use CNG as an alternative fuel, to countries like Venezuela, Nigeria, and Tanzania.
A BBC report by Soutik Biswas notes the significance of Indian vultures in ecology. Titled ‘How decline of Indian vultures led to 500,000 human deaths’, it maps the impact of veterinary drugs on vultures’ lives and, in turn, human life.
“Of the vulture species in India, the white-rumped vulture, Indian vulture, and red-headed vulture have suffered the most significant long-term declines since the early 2000s, with populations dropping by 98%, 95% and 91%, respectively and by the mid-1990s, the 50 million-strong vulture population had plummeted to near zero because of diclofenac, a cheap non-steroidal painkiller for cattle that is fatal to vultures,” writes Biswas, referring to a study published in the American Economic Association journal.
“More action is required” to safeguard the vulture population from extinction, according to the report, as the loss of vultures caused around 100,000 additional human deaths annually. “These deaths were due to the spread of disease and bacteria that vultures would have otherwise removed from the environment,” it reads.
Vance’s ‘childless cat lady’ remark, Australian scientists find graveyard in the sea
Donald Trump’s running mate for the US presidential elections, J.D. Vance’s ‘childless cat lady’ remark has taken the internet by storm with the likes of Jennifer Aniston and Kamala Harris’ step-daughter, Ella Emhoff, speaking up against it. To know more about Vance’s comments that spurred another debate on childbearing and abortion rights, read The New York Times’ report.
Australia has solved a big maritime mystery as scientists have finally found the resting place of a 1969 shipwreck. To know more, read these reports by ABC News and CBS News.
(Edited by Mannat Chugh)
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